Abstract
This study investigated how computer science students seek help online in their learning and what factors predict their online help-seeking behaviors. Online help-seeking behaviors include online searching, asking teachers online for help, and asking peers online for help. 207 students from a large university in the southeastern United States participated in the study. It was revealed that computer science students tended to search online more frequently than ask people online for help. Five factors, including epistemological belief, interest, learning proficiency level, prior knowledge of the learning subject, and problem difficulty, were explored as potential predictors in this study. It was found that learning proficiency level and problem difficulty were significant predictors of three types of online help-seeking behaviors, and other factors influenced online help seeking to different extents. The study provides evidence to support that online searching should be considered as an integrated part of online help seeking, and gives guidelines for practice of facilitating online help seeking and future studies.
Highlights
Help seeking is a cognitive skill which has become crucial for enabling college students to succeed in their studies
This study contributes to the literature of help seeking by a) demonstrating that online searching should be considered as an integrated part of online help seeking, and b) discovering the difference of online help-seeking behaviors between novice and expert students
The findings of this study showed that students tended to search online more frequently than asking people for help online, which provides fine-grained evidence supporting that online searching should be considered as an integrated part of online help seeking
Summary
Help seeking is a cognitive skill which has become crucial for enabling college students to succeed in their studies. There is evidence that college students often encounter significant barriers in help seeking in classroom settings. This may involve, for example, difficulties in identifying a relevant individual who could be supportive or hesitation in approaching potential helpers due to anxiety or a lack of self-confidence (Karabenick, 2003; Kozanitis, Desbiens, & Chouinard, 2007; Ryan & Shin, 2011). As web technology continues to play an increasingly more important role in learning and teaching, students may not need to face such challenges when seeking help. Web technology poses new and emerging challenges for help seeking. Given a wrong or ambiguous query, search engines are likely to only return irrelevant and useless information
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