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Internet-Mediated Digital Informal Learning Portfolios in STEM Higher Education: A Computational Grounded Theory Study of Online Peer Advice Communities

Jianjun Xiao, Yuxi Long

Abstract

Internet technologies have expanded higher education students' access to learning resources, peer guidance, and skill-development opportunities beyond formal curricula. Yet the ways students assemble these distributed online resources into coherent learning pathways remain insufficiently understood. This study examines how STEM students construct digital informal learning portfolios through internet-mediated peer advice and platform use. Drawing on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and informal learning frameworks, we analyze 3,607 peer advice posts from a large online student community using Computational Grounded Theory (CGT). Results show that career pathway (69.6% of coded documents) and career orientation (59.7%) are the dominant organizing dimensions, yielding three distinct digital informal learning portfolios: a graduate-study portfolio centered on competition training, mathematical foundations, and staged preparation; an industry-employment portfolio centered on self-directed skill building, online platform learning, and strategically timed internships; and a public-sector portfolio characterized by dual-track hedging across graduate study, enterprise employment, and public-sector preparation pathways. The online peer community itself functions as a distributed informal curriculum, collectively producing and transmitting pathway-specific guidance about what to learn, when to learn it, and which internet resources to prioritize. These findings extend SCCT into the domain of internet-mediated digital informal learning and introduce career front-loading as a pattern of early learning reorganization. Implications are discussed for institutional learning support, recognition of internet-enabled learning, and the design of digital guidance infrastructures in higher education.

Internet-Mediated Digital Informal Learning Portfolios in STEM Higher Education: A Computational Grounded Theory Study of Online Peer Advice Communities

Abstract

Internet technologies have expanded higher education students' access to learning resources, peer guidance, and skill-development opportunities beyond formal curricula. Yet the ways students assemble these distributed online resources into coherent learning pathways remain insufficiently understood. This study examines how STEM students construct digital informal learning portfolios through internet-mediated peer advice and platform use. Drawing on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and informal learning frameworks, we analyze 3,607 peer advice posts from a large online student community using Computational Grounded Theory (CGT). Results show that career pathway (69.6% of coded documents) and career orientation (59.7%) are the dominant organizing dimensions, yielding three distinct digital informal learning portfolios: a graduate-study portfolio centered on competition training, mathematical foundations, and staged preparation; an industry-employment portfolio centered on self-directed skill building, online platform learning, and strategically timed internships; and a public-sector portfolio characterized by dual-track hedging across graduate study, enterprise employment, and public-sector preparation pathways. The online peer community itself functions as a distributed informal curriculum, collectively producing and transmitting pathway-specific guidance about what to learn, when to learn it, and which internet resources to prioritize. These findings extend SCCT into the domain of internet-mediated digital informal learning and introduce career front-loading as a pattern of early learning reorganization. Implications are discussed for institutional learning support, recognition of internet-enabled learning, and the design of digital guidance infrastructures in higher education.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 36 sections, 1 equation, 2 figures, 7 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Theoretical Background
  3. Informal Learning in Digital Higher Education Contexts
  4. Social Cognitive Career Theory and Learning Behavior
  5. Analytical Framework
  6. Literature Review
  7. Internet-Mediated Learning Gaps in STEM Higher Education
  8. Digital Informal Learning in Higher Education
  9. Online Peer Communities and Knowledge Sharing in Higher Education
  10. Computational Grounded Theory
  11. Research Gap
  12. Methodology
  13. Methodological Rationale
  14. Data: Online Peer Advice Community
  15. Three-Phase CGT Analysis
  16. ...and 21 more sections

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Career-directed digital informal learning portfolio framework. Dashed arrows indicate the theoretical grounding of each stage.
  • Figure 2: Three career-directed digital informal learning portfolios derived from axial coding and selective coding. Nodes represent the most consequential codes used in the portfolio interpretations; edge labels report lift and co-occurrence frequency (n). In Panel 2, the online learning--self-directed learning--programming triad has no qualifying direct association with the enterprise employment pathway code; it is included because its constituent codes qualify through internship experience as an intermediary (internship $\leftrightarrow$ programming: lift = 1.381; internship $\leftrightarrow$ self-directed learning: lift = 1.314). The public-sector portfolio is visualized as a hedging structure across career endpoints rather than a dense capability bundle.