Insights, Provocations, and Next Steps: Discoveries From the Research in Management Learning & Education (RMLE) UnConferences

[Extract] For many of us, 2020 has been a year of unprecedented change. These changes have affected many of us in numerous ways including personally, professionally, socially, and physically, to name a few. At one end of the spectrum, many have experienced professional discomforts like the logistical and andragogical challenges of adapting syllabi to virtual platforms or the personal challenges of managing young children schooling from home. At the other end, changes may have included living with a newfound fear of watching your loved ones go to work each day as essential workers, not knowing if their own lives would be cut short in the process, or watching loved ones die in isolation, unable to be comforted in person by friends and family. Circumstances that may never have seemed possible are, in some instances, now realities. In this highly uncertain environment, there is no “new normal” just a stream of states that can best be described as our “next normal” (Husbands, 2020). In terms of our professional activities, which are often inextricably tied to many of the other aspects of our lives, there can be no doubt that we are in the midst of significant change. The COVID-19 pandemic has simultaneously highlighted numerous weaknesses within the global higher education sector (e.g., Dill et al., 2020; Furstenberg, 2020; Jack & Smyth, 2020) as well as opened the door for positive growth and change (Lea, 2020; Lund Dean & Forray, 2020). Support, innovation, flexibility, and thoughtful adaptation are no longer luxuries, they are now core components for survival. We need to think outside of our proverbial boxes and work together to shape what will inevitably be a different and, ideally, significantly improved educational landscape. Change is here. And we are here to help shape it.