Giving ourselves the EDGE: capitalising on collaboration

This paper considers the collaboration of academics and third space professionals to create an enrichment programme in an English university. It briefly outlines the programme and explores student engagement and reaction to it before identifying tentative short term outcomes associated with it; increases in self-reported self-confidence, academic, digital, professional and leadership skills. The programme created space and time for academics and third space professional to come together, share their knowledge and recognise each other’s expertise to manifest ‘knotworking’ (Veles, 2022). A project lead with experience of being an academic and a third space professional helped to facilitate understanding and develop ‘ingroup’ features such as a sense of shared connection, co-operation, mutual help and respect for each other. It concludes that an evolving framework of third space professionals which is firmly part of the real institutional fabric leads to less reliance on project-based reinventions and instead fosters a steady rate of beneficial progress for the entire learning community.