Due to financial concerns and the shifting demographic of learners, in many institutions, three of the hallmarks of studio pedagogy, small course sizes, dedicated unique learning spaces and extended course-meeting times, are quickly eroding. The new reality for many programs is one where educators are expected to balance an increase in learners with a simultaneous decrease in overall contact time. There is an increasing gap between what once was and what is now. One way many educators are choosing to navigate this gap is through decentralizing studio-learning practices by using the internet.

This study endeavored to investigate how design educators are using the internet to augment and extend studio pedagogy. Though this study was drawn from the author’s research into studio pedagogy as it is enacted within the field of graphic design, given the familial relationship between all design disciplines, it is speculated that The Replication Collaboration Continuum, the theory that emerged from the study, has broad relevance for all design educators curious about how to implement greater decentralization into their learning studios. In this way, the Replication Collaboration Continuum can become a base mechanism for educators, providing them an empirically based research bridge which can act as an entry level scaffold for practices that best support their own unique learner populations and their own unique studio pedagogy ecosystem.