Finding my way around: the information process of distance students when searching for free online resources

As distance learning continues to develop and evolve, this research report surveys the way distance students seek information. This study was conducted on New Zealand theology undergraduate distance students’ and focuses mainly on how technology contributes to their information seeking process. Based on a mixed methods methodology, it aims to find out where students seek information, what kind of information they are looking for, and explores how technology and social networking sites change or contribute to the information seeking process. The main aim was to find out how students access free online resources such as Google books, open source journals and websites. The findings from this research revealed that there are a number of ways undergraduate theology distance students look for information, and use information. For example some students’ main focus is to seek resources to complete an assignment and thus have no intention of learning from the experience. Their aim is to seek resources to meet the requirements of the assignment. On the other hand, there are students that have experience either through their work or from other study. This group of students have the knowledge in hand and simply seek resources to support their argument. The research proposes a new information seeking model which is based on a cyclic process. The proposed information seeking behaviour model, supports the many ways students behave when seeking for information. The characteristics “starting/chaining, evaluation, browsing and writing” are not steps and it can be overlapped or interrelated. On some occasions, a step might even be missed due to the time frame and the availability of resources available to distance students. The research ends with a number of recommendations that library could possibly employ when serving the needs of our distance students.

随着远程学习持续发展迭代，本研究报告针对远程学习者的信息寻求行为展开系统性调研。本研究以新西兰神学专业本科远程学习者为研究对象，重点探讨技术对其信息寻求流程的赋能作用。本研究采用混合方法研究范式，旨在探明学习者的信息获取渠道、所需信息类型，并探究技术与社交网站如何改变或推动信息寻求流程。本研究的核心目标为厘清学生如何获取谷歌图书（Google Books）、开源期刊及各类网站等免费在线资源。研究结果显示，神学本科远程学习者的信息查找与利用途径呈现显著多样性：部分学生仅以完成作业为目标获取资源，并无从该过程中开展学习的意图，其核心诉求仅为满足作业要求；另有部分学生凭借工作经历或既往学习经验已具备相关知识储备，仅需获取资源以支撑自身论证。本研究提出一种基于循环流程的新型信息寻求模型，该信息寻求行为模型可适配学习者多样化的信息寻求行为模式，其包含的“启动/链式关联、评估、浏览与写作”并非严格线性步骤，可相互重叠或交叉关联。在部分场景下，受时间框架与远程学习者可获取资源的限制，部分步骤甚至可能被省略。本研究最终提出若干实践建议，以供图书馆在适配远程学习者需求时参考采用。