ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Digital Learning Innovations
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1599064
Bridging Gaps and Shaping Futures: Digital Informal Learning (DIL) and the Construction of Possible Selves in Chinese Higher Education
Provisionally accepted- 1University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England, United Kingdom
- 2Xi'an Eurasia University, Xi’an, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Digital informal learning has emerged as a critical phenomenon in higher education, offering a flexible supplement to traditional instruction and fostering personal as well as academic growth. This study examines how Chinese university students engage with digital informal learning and how their envisioned future identities, or possible selves, motivate and shape their learning behaviours. A mixedmethods design was employed, combining a survey of over 500 undergraduate students with in-depth interviews of 18 participants at a Chinese university. The survey results revealed that while students generally possess a limited conceptual understanding of digital informal learning, a substantial majority recognise its importance and integrate it into their daily study routines. Interview data further illustrated that students rely on digital resources to compensate for the constraints of conventional classroom settings, such as limited time and outdated materials, and to overcome inadequacies in teaching quality. Moreover, the findings suggest that the interplay between students' aspirations for an ideal academic self and the fear of academic failure drives their adoption of digital informal learning as both a coping mechanism and a pathway to self-improvement. These results not only underscore the dual role of digital informal learning in supplementing formal curricula and promoting self-directed growth but also highlight challenges such as fragmented knowledge acquisition and information overload. The study contributes to educational theory by extending the possible selves framework into the digital learning arena and offers practical insights for curriculum development, teacher training, and digital literacy initiatives. Ultimately, the research advances our understanding of how digital learning innovations can be harnessed to create more responsive and equitable educational environments.
Keywords: Digital learning, informal learning, higher education, possible selves, China
Received: 24 Mar 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Zhang, Liu and He. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jian Zhang, Xi'an Eurasia University, Xi’an, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.