Constructing learning spaces: What we can learn from studies of informal learning online

A report from the market research firm Ambient Insight indicated that by 2015, 25 million post-secondary students in the United States could be enrolled in an online course (Adkins, 2011). As a consequence, they argued, we will see a decline in student enrollment in physical classrooms. In fact, the report estimated a five-year decline of 22 percent (from 14.4 million in 2010 to 4.1 million in 2015) in students attending traditional classrooms. Yet, in the face of these projections and despite innovation in educational technologies, there remains a consistent number of academics who are concerned that the quality of online instruction is not equal to face-to-face (f2f) encounters (Allen & Seaman, 2011). It is this question—a question of learning and how to facilitate high quality experiences—that we take up in this article. This question forces us to consider simultaneously: 1) what are the conditions that are necessary for learning to occur in online spaces, and 2) what are the best practices associated with effective learning these environments? To these ends, we focus on the characteristics of digital informal learning environments and on how these environments are constructed rhetorically and primarily discursively via deliberate facilitation strategies focused on encouraging learning.