Abstract:
The objectives of this research were to 1) study the impacts and problems of a knowledge management project aiming to strengthen the community of community colleges in the northeastern region, 2) study the factors affecting the performance of the knowledge management project to strengthen the community of community colleges in the northeastern region, and 3) propose guidelines for improving the performance of the knowledge management project to strengthen the community of community colleges in the northeastern region. This was a mixed methods study. The quantitative research was conducted by studying a sample of 320 respondents selected from a population of 1,600 people using the proportional stratified sampling technique. The sample size was calculated using Taro Yamanes formula. The participants were selected from village headmen, members of subdistrict administrative organization councils and the people who participated in the project. The instrument for data collecting was a 5 level rating scale questionnaire with a reliability of 0.87. The data were analyzed using percentage, mean and standard deviation. The hypotheses were tested by stepwise regression analysis. The questionnaire was used to answer the objectives 1 and 2. The qualitative research was conducted through focus group discussions involving 12 participants who were selected purposively from 4 project administrators, 1 person from the 4 each college, 4 community leaders and 4 people who had participated in some of the project activities. Moreover, in-depth interviews were conducted with of 24 key informants who had selected purposively, 12 were community leaders, village philosophers, scholars of local wisdom and local leaders, and the other 12 were people who had participated in the project. This answered objective 3. The data were analyzed by analytic induction and interpretation. The research results revealed that: 1) The study of the impacts and problems of the knowledge management project to strengthen the community of community colleges in the northeastern region revealed that the practices were overall, at a moderate level ( = 3.34, S.D. = 0.29). Considering each aspect individually, from high to low, revealed that the aspect of local wisdom conservation was the highest ( = 3.38, S.D. = 0.29), followed by the aspects of new knowledge ( = 3.37, S.D. = 0.56), immunization ( = 3.34, S.D. = 0.38) and occupation income creation ( = 3.28, S.D. = 0.38), respectively. The problems of the knowledge management project included the fact that most people did not understand the objectives of the project clearly. The project was not continued and overlapped with missions of other agencies. It was also found that the leaders and some participants lacked enthusiasm, and skills for information technology and policy formulation. The qualitative research revealed that there was knowledge creation to enhance the old or local wisdom for knowledge management, that they could increase the real income but not sustainably, and the most of project participants were still unable to create permanent employment. 2) The study revealed that there were 3 factors affecting the performance of knowledge management project: (1) the factor of management (β = 0.682) which comprised 3 variables, namely leadership, participation and coordination (2) the factor of project management (β = 0.286) which comprised 3 variables, namely project activities, learners and society, and (3) the factor of implementation (β = -0.179) which comprised 4 variables, namely clear objectives, support of related agencies, real implementation and evaluability. These 3 factors could explain 64.90 percent (R2 = 0.649) of the variation in the performance of the knowledge management project at the statistical significance level of 0.05. The qualitative research revealed that there were other factors affecting the projects management especially the close cooperation with the private sector in utilizing the knowledge concerning the qualified products, and creating good markets as well as supporting the essential product research. 3) The proposed guidelines for improving the performance of the knowledge management project to strengthen the community of community colleges consisted of 6 key practices: (1) community colleges should formulate management policies with the participation of the community, creating opportunities for community colleges to propose programs, projects and budgets and consolidate them with provincial agencies and local governments, (2) the operation of activities should be done as to utilize community research in order to extend knowledge and make it standard, (3) community colleges should develop themselves to be sources of knowledge transfer, from old to new generations, and maintain the culture and local community wisdom to strengthen sustainable self- reliance, (4) community colleges should create a mindset that encourages to love their birthplace, local wisdom conservation, and learning, and to be active and take leadership roles, and to be able to implement projects and create jobs, employment and income, (5) they should coordinate with educational institutions including technical colleges and universities to share the knowledge developed and allow for the accumulation of knowledge as a score, so that certificates can be issued to participants who are able to transfer this knowledge to diploma degree levels, and (6) they should coordinate and establish MOUs with the private sector to develop product standards using this knowledge management, including production processes, packaging and marketing as well as E-commerce products that could be commercialized for foreign markets.