European First Year Experience Conference: Learning through a third space development community

The European First Year Experience (EFYE) Conference has existed for nearly 20 years. It has no formal infrastructure or funding to maintain its existence, just a common interest (Kenny, 2016) around a desire to support all students to successfully transition into and through university regardless of their pre-entry status, and to promote and develop the strategies, policies and practices for those students and staff who can enable this transition regardless of their role. This is enacted through the will, enthusiasm and perseverance of a community of scholars and practitioners drawn from across Europe (Bonne & Nutt, 2016). This voluntary organisation, we argue, has become an effective third space development community. Colleagues will come and go as the conference moves to different countries each year in a deliberate attempt to broaden engagement across the nations of Europe, but the message is being shared. At the heart of the community is a group of people who have all hosted the conference. They provide the engine to drive the identification of new conference hosts and the creation of opportunities for the sharing of good practice. This diverse group of leaders embrace the “common experiences, needs, expectations, and access to opportunity” identified by Parkinson et al. (2020, p. 195), as important for community-based development, as they have as a foundation the desire to share practice that enhances student and staff experiences. They operate across and within universities, working within a third space that challenges the silos that exist, and offer a focused approach to collaborative, community led, educational development of the first-year experience.