Website preferences of Finnish and Mexican university students: A cross-cultural study

This paper is focused on understanding Internet use and comparing cross - cultural differences according to the contents and preferences of the websites that are most visited by two groups of university students from Finland (n = 30) and Mexico (n = 30). The following research is an exploratory qualitative study with some basic statistics. A questio nnaire was used in this study as a data collection instrument. The findings show that in both groups, university students prefer websites about social networking (Facebook), sending email (MSN), videos (YouTube), multiplatform applications (Google), educat ional sites (University of Oulu), and wikis (Wikipedia). This demonstrated that both groups have an interest in sharing ideas and meeting friends. The differences reveal that Finnish students use their university’s website more regularly than the Mexican s tudent respondents and that they tend to implement their ideas more often. Furthermore, this study explored how university students use the Internet and what type of influence the Internet has on them. The emotional effects suggest that almost quarter of s tudents reported using the internet to escape negative feelings, such as depression or nervousness. The findings provide information for university teachers about students’ habits and prior knowledge regarding Internet use for educational purposes. The information will be helpful when designing learning and teaching in multicultural student groups