Enough reading about the Third Space, let’s get ‘talking’ (at the Third Space Symposium)

This is a somewhat tongue in cheek title, of course, as I’m a huge fan of Emily and Diane’s work on the Third Space Perspectives blog and devour new writing here with relish. Hello – I’m Colin Simpson and I would like to invite you to join us at an event that some third space practitioner colleagues and I are organising in November – the Third Space Symposium.

This is an event in two parts – a one day in-person symposium at the University of Melbourne (Australia) (Sun, 1st Dec) and a (free) two week asynchronous online ‘slowposium’ preceding this (Fri 15th Nov – Sat 30th Nov). If you are planning on being in Melbourne on the 1st, wonderful – but given the international nature of this blog I am assuming that the Slowposium might be more accessible to most of you.

We aim to create an online space to explore all facets of the experiences of third space practitioners in tertiary education, casting a critical eye over professional identity, relationships, status, enablers and inhibitors of practice, wellbeing, collaboration, professionalisation, research, and theory, to name but a few. People working in, or with an interest in, all areas of the third space are welcome to contribute.

You can contribute by proposing a topic for discussion with some kind of supporting resource (article, blog post, podcast, recording of you breakdancing, book/chapter, work in progress for community feedback etc) - or you can just drop in and out at your leisure to see what people are discussing. We are also open to proposals for special synchronous events – workshops, panel discussions and similar. (Generally, though, to maximise accessibility, we expect that most of this event will be asynchronous).  

This event is being organised by the ASCILITE TELedvisors Network and ASCILITE Learning Design SIG and collectively we bring many decades of third space practical experience and scholarship to this endeavour. (ASCILITE is the Australasian ALT equivalent, for our UK friends).

More information about the Third Space Symposia can be found on our website and we also have a demo version of the Slowposium Moodle site running to give you a sample of how that will work. We also have a mailing list if you would like to sign up for updates.

Proposal submissions are due in early to mid-September – it doesn’t need to be new work, and it isn’t peer reviewed, we are mostly looking for relevance and contribution to understanding/discussion.   

Registration for the Third Space Slowposium is now open

Hope to see you there

Colin Simpson
Third Space Symposium Organising Committee