Abstract:

Multiple disruptions in business and education have engendered significant changes in the learning environment for tertiary educators and students. This paper contributes to the discourse in education literature concerning contemporary educational transformations and student engagement. Specifically, it investigates three primary dimensions of educators’ roles in designing and implementing three-dimensional learning spaces in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. These dimensions include safety, sociality, and transcendence. Through a conceptual study, this paper explores the relationship between these dimensions and student engagement. It contends that in a turbulent environment characterized by unprecedented changes such as increased digitization, internationalization, and isolation in tertiary education, focusing on cognitive, conative, and affective safety; sociality through connectedness, collaboration, diversity, and inclusivity; and transcendent goals and aspirations beyond the self and present moment are essential for engaging tertiary learning spaces. The paper elucidates these constructs and relationships through a framework and a series of propositions that connect learning spaces to student engagement. Additionally, it offers examples of practices that enable tertiary business educators to adapt and create safe, socially engaging, and transcendent future-ready learning environments.

Keywords:

Engagement, environmental changes, internationalization, learning spaces, learning space design, transformation.