Digital technologies are massively being used in educational institutions and society, and this leads a transforming way of learning and studying not only inside but also outside educational institutions. Electronic tools and mobile devices, social networking environments and online learning are increasingly becoming popular among students. Therefore digital learning is becoming a central part of student’s daily life as a form of informal learning. Informal learning refers to learning that occurs outside the school (Callanan, Cervantes, &Loomis, 2011), the informal learning process and structure is self-directed, intentional interest (rather than curriculum-based), non-assessment-driven and non-qualification-oriented. Current research suggests that students have a great diversity of technology use and types of technologies adopted into learning (Corrin et al., 2010; Johnson, Levine,& Smith, 2009; Jones, Ramanau, Cross, & Healing, 2010;), but the understanding of learning with digital media from learners’ perspective is still limited (Corrin, L., Bennett, S., & Lockyer, 2010).University students’ lives nowadays are saturated with digital media, they develop their experience and knowledge of digital media in out-of-school settings, the way of their learning is clearly different from how they use digital media in school. This study aims to understand how university students learning with digital media in informal learning context, focusing on identifying the individual factors (Intrinsic Motivation, Attitudes to Digital Technology, Digital Competence and Productive Learning Habits) that influence students’ digital informal learning, and the relationships among these factors.
Digital Competence has been acknowledged as one of the 8 key competences for Lifelong Learning by the European Union(Commission, 2006), which is the set of knowledge, skills, attitudes (thus including abilities, strategies, values and awareness) that are required when using ICT and digital media to perform tasks (Ala-Mutka, 2011). Hatlevik argues digital competence is students’ ability to achieve with digital technology (Hatlevik & Christophersen, 2013). Meanwhile, informal learning for young people is key opportunity to interplay with digital media(Meyers, Erickson, & Small, 2013). Since the informal learning is a learner’s control process, which including the control over the process and the goals (Naismith, Sharples, Vavoula, & Lonsdale, 2004), intrinsic motivation is often higher than in formal settings where goals are pre-set(A. C. Jones, Scanlon, & Clough, 2013). Students who are intrinsically motivated to learn often perform better in formal learning settings (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Intrinsic motivation has been associated with high cognitive performance, in-depth learning, and better recall of the acquired knowledge (Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, & Deci, 2004). In addition, Productive learning habits refers to more productive learning than being distracted, deep processing productive than shallow processing, and seeking multiple perspective more productive than trusting single sources (Thompson, 2013), and previous researches show that high levels of digital media use have some association with their productive learning habits (Thompson, 2013). Therefore, the productive learning habits Scale is also included in this study to test whether more productive behavior have positive effects on student’s digital informal learning.
