A multi-dimensional hybrid learning environment for business education : a knowledge dynamics perspective

Abstract

The main promise of new, digitally enabled and hybrid learning environments is to enable future-ready knowledge workers by equipping them with business and digital competences. However, business education (BE) research often focuses on the problems of instructional design and individual disciplines, rather than on the challenges of developing a holistic knowledge and competences required to ensure students’ long-term employability. This paper, to address this gap, approaches BE as a knowledge dynamics field that consists of rational, emotional and spiritual knowledge and proposes a related framework to serve as a guide for developing and analyzing a hybrid learning environment (HLE) that would support BE. Then, it uses the developed framework in an interview-based study to understand the students’ perceptions of how the implementation of an HLE in postgraduate course stimulated knowledge dynamics for BE. The results show that the HLE stimulated different aspects of knowledge due to the diversity of modes of learning-Face-to-Face (F2F) and online, the diversification of learning sources and the internationalization of the course-level curriculum. These results pave the direction for teachers to use the knowledge framework as a compass for future implementations and evaluations of similar methods.