Online Information Resources: Thai Students' Research in the Digital Culture

Abstract

This research aims to highlight the specific online information sources the students use to obtain information for their study. It not only analyses how the students navigate various types of sources on the internet but also explains how they respond to different types of problems that are raised. Undertaking this study with 21 postgraduate students, we did the focus group discussions as well as redesigned and further developed an online data capturing technique by mixing quantitative and qualitative approaches. This is a technique integrating a number of currently
available online technologies, which normally exist in isolation; namely a social networking system, a proxy server, and an online real-time-supporting service. Altogether, these design innovations enabled us to collect contextual information during observational studies and follow-up on interesting subject matters raised by participants. We found that the key online information gateways and sources the students used to obtain the information for their studies are Google, Wikipedia, Weblogs and Academic and Government domains. Our argument has suggested
that the students’ attitude and value to the online information resources highlights important issues to do with economic and cultural capital (dis)advantage regarding Thai education culture in this digital age.