University Students’ Learning in Transition: A Research-In-Progress Perspective on Internet Platform Affordances Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has forced universities worldwide to rapidly change their lectures to a distance setting, leaving students to a high degree on their own and engaging in informal learning. In this regard, user-generated content-based Internet platforms (UGC platforms) such as Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook provide users with openly accessible support for various informal learning needs. This research in progress applies a two-staged qualitative interview study with students comparing the situation before and during the Covid-19 pandemic by applying an affordance perspective. We seek to offer differential insights on perceived affordances of UGC platforms and conditions facilitating their actualization. Based on an adapted Grounded Theory-based analysis, the stage-1 interviews have already shown the viability of this analytic approach and that students perceive and actualize a range of affordances of UGC platforms. Facilitating conditions for affordance actualization embrace two main themes: default behavioral and motivational conditions. In stage 2, the results will be verified, and new insights into changes compared to the pre-pandemic state will be derived.