LEGO, fishbowls, and collaboration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi33.1219Keywords:
collaboration, assessment, academic development, educator development, professional standards framework, third spaceAbstract
This article reflects on what matters in collaboration. It is widely recognised that calls for ‘collaboration’ and ‘collaborative ways of working’ abound in research, scholarship, pedagogic practices, and beyond as a desirable student skill set (Veles, 2022; McKay and Sridharan, 2023), and a way to address complexity and problem-solving (Graesser et al., 2018; Scoular et al., 2020). Now, the recent iteration of the Advance HE Professional Standards Framework (2023) cites a new dimension of practice, PSF V5, that requires fellowship claimants to explicitly evidence how they ‘collaborate with others to enhance practice’ (p. 5). However, understandings of what constitutes collaboration remain fuzzy and—specifically in the context of university professionals—somewhat underexplored (Newell and Bain, 2019). Furthermore, collaboration often falls to so called ‘third-space’ professionals, as they occupy a natural (but not always comfortable) confluence between academics, researchers, professional services, and learner communities (Veles, Carter and Boon, 2018).
This article presents a session plan, which has been co-designed by two third-space professionals working within educator development. The session uses a novel assessment matrix—the 9 Domains of Collaboration—as an approach to explore and critique the defining characteristics of collaborative endeavour. The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, the session plan and 9 Domains framework offers colleagues in higher education a tangible evaluative aid for provoking, tracing, and documenting collaborative practices. Secondly, we offer reflections on how collaboration is expressed in ways that align with PSF V5 and that amplify the work and contributions of the third space.
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