Positioning third space practitioners to co-create online education opportunities: voices from the field

Third space practitioners working in the higher education sector (including learning development practitioners, subject librarians, and learning technologists) will undertake duties that would have traditionally been covered by either academic or professional service staff. By virtue of their expansive roles, third space practitioners will routinely develop distinct and unique understandings of the student journey and learning experience. As part of curriculum development processes, these insights have the potential to complement and enrich the learning, teaching, and assessment perspectives of a course team. Despite this, third space practitioners have historically often been overlooked as part of the curriculum development process. Given the potential added value that is being lost, it is suggested that universities should consider adopting proactive measures that will position third space practitioners to engage meaningfully in the co-creation of curriculum. For this to be possible, the conditions that can serve to promote, or inhibit, third space practitioners working in collaboration with course teams must be established. This paper includes five reflective co-creation case studies with a broad online education focus. These are provided by third space practitioners (two learning developers, two learning technologists, and a librarian) and consider the process of co-creation and what were prerequisite conditions for co-creation of curriculum to occur. Informed by these accounts, 10 strategies for facilitating co-creation between academic course teams and third space practitioners are proposed.