This discussion explores the impact of space and place on online communities
that support workplace learning and the developing legal professional. Metaphors
of cyberspace from the 1990s are revisited to examine if the anticipated potential
for cyberspace as “a place where we will be freed from the limitation and
embarrassment of physical embodiment” (Wertheim, 1999) enhances students’
emerging professional legal identity. Siemens’ (2005) concept of connectivism is
useful to consider how Law in Practice at Victoria University in Melbourne,
Australia, might be complemented, multiplied and supported through online
communities in a blending of the real and virtual.