Higher education is compelled to address its performance against globalised forces and technical drivers of change. Accelerated business systems, modes of delivery, technological advancements, and market and labour trends complicate the demands on learning environments. As a result, the emergent and growing diversity within the higher education sector, characterised by a broad range of providers, remains an important imperative. Against this back-drop, the pressures for delivering quality in higher education continue to be negotiated against shifting national and international benchmarks. This poses several questions! Will closed systems and competitive paradigms continue to prosper against these challenges? Will collaborative practice become an option or imperative in renewing the social settings for learning and growing for both students and for practitioners of quality? How critical and/or urgent is it for us to cross the borders of our institutions or ‘move boundaries between organisations’ to work more effectively?
This study will adopt a case-study approach to investigating the aspirations, success and challenges of a specific partnership driving quality in the Australian higher education sector. This partnership[1], is identified as a national-based community enacting an open-source, cooperative model of practice to create dynamic, active ‘third spaces’ of engagement. For the purpose of this study, the Third Space[2] is defined as a neutral collaborative space where identity and practice is negotiated to satisfy complementary vision and compelling purpose. This study will assess the benefits and challenges of a third-space model of collaborative practice to assess the best-practice design elements, working culture and academic leadership required to deliver quality in higher education.