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This article discusses the creation of a research-focused virtual community of practice (vCoP) for geographically-dispersed third space professionals, motivated by desires for enhanced professional collaboration, visibility and identity. The authors used collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to evaluate their personal reflections as vCoP participants. Data were gathered in two collaborative writing activities and analysed using thematic analysis (TA). The TA identified two connected themes, which capture the vCoP members’ aspirations to transcend their current roles and be research-active through connecting with like-minded professionals. Collaborative writing activities, including authoring this paper, cultivated elements of academic identity such as independence and purpose. A non-hierarchical and supportive vCoP environment allowed the members to work beyond time and institutional constraints to foster the evolution of the community and an emerging sense of professional identity beyond that typically associated with third space roles. The paper offers a model of collaboration that could help groups in similar situations.

Peer assessment is the process whereby students provide formative or summative feedback to fellow students about their work. There have been many decades of research into the potential benefits of peer assessment and numerous studies have shown that peer assessment offers real educational, and sometimes social benefits for students. In addition, self assessment is often included alongside, but the benefits are sometimes disputed. This article will provide a brief summary of the research establishing the educational benefits of peer assessment and self assessment. There has also been a lot of work in recent years exploring the use of technology tosupport peer assessment. This work will be reviewed and recent examples of peer assessment in the physical sciences will be highlighted.

This workshop discussed how collaborative reflection and writing provides us, as a group of Learning Developers, with insights into our role and sense of identity. The wider potential for using collaborative writing to develop topics of mutual interest was also explored. Our reflections on the collaborative writing process arose from our first-hand experience of collaborative writing (Bickle et al., 2021). Therefore, we aimed to introduce participants to the tools we used for our writing and encourage them to experience the tools themselves to stimulate a discussion on the potential and challenges of collaborative writing for LD research and practice. We hoped to increase participants’ understanding of collaborative writing through practice and reflection and provide ideas on how others can initiate a collaborative writing community. The introduction briefly outlined the insights we gained from our study, focussing particularly on the way collaborative writing served as a tool to examine and broaden our identities as Learning Developers. It also introduced the methodologies for creating (collaborative writing) and analysing (collaborative autoethnography) data. Next, participants were invited to try out collaborative writing activities and reflect on their potential use as part of their own practice. We used a Google document (Figure 1) to collect their spontaneous responses to short writing prompts related to the challenges and potential of collaborative writing. Finally, at the end of the session, participants left with tips and techniques on how to develop a collaborative writing group of their own.

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