The Emerging University: Co-creating Learning Ecosystems for the Futures We Need

This special issue is linked to the 2026 HELTASA (Un)Conference, hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, taking place 1–4 December 2026. The theme of this special issue is related to the theme of the (un)conference.

Higher education globally is at a crossroads, buffeted by questions of relevance and responsiveness, disrupted by technological shifts and socio-political pressures, and tasked with preparing a place of learning for students who will be expected to navigate a profoundly unpredictable future. This special issue focuses on the ‘emerging university’ as a space requiring continuous reimagination and co-creation. For South African higher education, global uncertainty converges with an unequal society and its unique set of context-specific demands: the still-ongoing project of decolonisation, fiscal constraints, and the urgent need to provide a rich learning environment where students can prepare themselves for a complex and rapidly evolving labour market (CHE, 2021; Jansen, 2022; Mbembe, 2016). Simultaneously, the rise of generative AI (GenAI) has introduced a new layer of complexity, forcing university teachers to confront profound questions about academic integrity, the nature of knowledge, and the very purpose of higher education in an age of machine intelligence (Bearman et al., 2023; Kramm & McKenna, 2023; Swiecki et al., 2022). These pressures demand a fundamental renegotiation of the “what, how, and why” of university education.

It is against this backdrop that we envision an evolving institution: The Emerging University – a dynamic, responsive entity that is agile in its practice, deliberate in its values, and which is co-created by all who have a stake in its future. In a landscape shaped by disruption, the university must be a living ecosystem of knowledge engagement, generation, and production. This ecosystem is co-created by and for students, university staff, and communities, for the multiple alternative futures we can conceive of.

The theme consists of several related broad topics:

1. Curriculum change: Epistemology, GenAI and what students learn
2. Assessing learning that matters
3. Relational learning and teaching: Care, power, co-creation and community
4. Future higher education ecosystems: What to preserve, expand or let go of?

Contributions should demonstrate clear implications for educational theory and/or practice and advance understanding for co-creating future learning and teaching ecosystems in South African higher education.

The special issue welcomes various types of manuscripts, including:

• Original empirical research
• Conceptual and theoretical articles
• Scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) studies
• Action research and applied case studies
• Interdisciplinary perspectives
• Innovative practices from Southern African higher education environments

We invite submissions for consideration in this special issue of The Independent Journal of Teaching and Learning (The IJTL), a diamond open access journal accredited by the DHET and listed on SciELO SA, Web of Science (Clarivate) and the Directory of Open Access Journals. The journal does not charge any author or page fees.