Student help-seeking attitudes and behaviors in a digital era

Abstract

This study examines college students' attitudes and habits for seeking academic help. Students preferences for seeking academic help via digital and non-digital technologies are identified (N = 438). Students' attitudes about seeking help are also analyzed. Factor analysis results indicate six attitudinal factors motivated students to seek help from peers and instructors: students' perceived usefulness of their peers; trust of peers; their perception of instructors; preference to work independently; overall perception of the course; and, perceived threat (i.e. sense of vulnerability about their ability). Overwhelmingly, students prefer to seek help from classmates rather than instructors. Due to the cohort model of the programs-where students take all or most their courses with the same students throughout the program-they seek help more in person than via using digital resources (texting, social media). Multiple linear regression analysis indicates that perceived threat, perception of instructors, and students' preference to work independently, are significant in predicting whether students sought help from instructors outside of class. Implications of these findings are discussed.

How Does Digital Competence Preserve University Students’ Psychological Well-Being During the Pandemic? An Investigation From Self-Determined Theory

“…In this study, digital competence was used to represent "competence" according to SDT. Help-seeking behaviors were chosen as the proxy for "relatedness" because help-seeking is a social and collective process and reflects students' sense of belongingness to a learning community based on which they cope for challenges and difficulties in online learning (Järvelä, 2011;Qayyum, 2018). Learning agency was used to represent "autonomy" as it is related to students' self-directedness and perceived control in online learning (Kearney et al, 2015;Juhaňák et al, 2019).…”

“…The items of digital competence were developed based on Alarcón et al (2020); Janssen et al (2013), andLópez-Meneses et al (2020), with a Cronbach α value of 0.87. The construct of help-seeking was adapted from Qayyum (2018), with a Cronbach α value of 0.79. The items measuring learning agency were adapted from Kearney et al (2015), with a Cronbach α value of 0.82.…”

A Social Network Analysis of Online Engagement for College Students Traditionally Underrepresented in STEM

“…Thus, contributing to the forum discussions by asking for help appears to be a successful selfregulated learning strategy, significantly related to improvement for all students, whether they were an UR-or non-UR-STEM student. We find it heartening that the UR-STEM students in this sample did not appear to experience the barriers to help-seeking that others have found [21,47], although we recognize that many previous studies examining this issue were conducted in face-to-face educational contexts [54], which may play a role in the behaviors that students exhibit and thus in the reported findings. We reckon that the requirement to post, the explicit endorsement of asking a question (one of the 3 types of posts allowed), and perhaps the relative anonymity of the online space all can contribute to an amelioration of the barriers to seeking help often documented for students from these UR-STEM groups.…”

A new evolutionary algorithm: Learner performance based behavior algorithm

“…It is normal that many fresh learners are not prepared either academically nor in terms of study skills for college-level study. Working on the learners' studying behaviors, such as seeking help and group working will help them to study more effectively and will result in improving their score during their study in the college [28,29]. Studying behaviors of a learner can be affected by studying behaviors of learners in the same department or learners in any other department.…”

“…However, improving behaviours like help-seeking, group working can have a positive impact on them. In addition, as mentioned in [28,29] learners can influence each other's behaviour. For example, when they work in groups or when they ask help from each other their studying behaviours will be affected.…”