Digital Media and Informal Learning: Alteration Mechanism and Captured Episodes

The main part of human learning happens en passant and outside of the formal education system - called informal learning. Even pupils and students spend more time in front of digital media screens than in formal settings inside schools. Consequently, their learning is strongly impacted by the use of digital media in everyday life. Nevertheless, current research, educational practice, and design of learning systems have their focus mostly on courseware and distance education for formal settings. The current study captures 373 informal learning episodes in everyday life of 77 learners in the domains of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning. Autovideography is used based on the day reconstruction method (DRM) and selected self-monitoring (SSM). Additional episodes are captured applying participatory action research (PAR) in extensive field studies in different cultures. The episodes are analyzed using qualitative content analysis and grounded theory based on selected learning theories to develop a category system of alteration mechanism for Learners’ perception sphere. The study shows that digital media do not alter informal learning in a simple cause-effect relationship but in a complex system of effects. Learners perception sphere obtain altered conditions for information assimilation on a learning topic. That can lead to informal learning in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domain. Related research with a focus on information assimilation and learning as media pedagogy, cognitive science, or learning psychology can use those identified mechanism for a differentiated view on digital media and consequently for more specific and sustainable results. One mechanism identified is the extension of linear learning content to a multi-dimensional perception sphere that is characterized by high interactivity, personalization, associativity, contingency, and often playfulness. Learners should become aware of the differences between the secondary experiences formed by that mechanism and primary experiences in the physical world to adjust their perception and media usage. Educators can respond by conveying key skills qualification as well as linking problems, processes, and contents between formal and informal settings. An important next research step is capturing and analyzing learning episodes in additional cultural areas to allow a fresh, quite different view on the widely discussed phenomena of digital divide.