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

TL;DR

This study analyzes how STEM students create digital informal learning portfolios through online peer advice, revealing three distinct portfolio types and the online community as a distributed informal curriculum.

Contribution

It extends Social Cognitive Career Theory to internet-mediated informal learning and introduces the concept of career front-loading in digital learning portfolios.

Findings

Three distinct digital informal learning portfolios identified.

Online peer community functions as a distributed informal curriculum.

Career front-loading reorganizes early learning pathways.

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.