Motivation to seek help and help efficiency in students who failed in an initial task

Abstract

In the present study, we investigated whether help-seeking behaviors differ in their respective links to motivational variables such as achievement goals, help-seeking perceptions and selfefficacy. Eighty-two students who had failed to solve an initial word-processing task were invited -but not forced -to choose help before engaging in a comprehension task. While 19 of them did not seek help of any kind, 63 students opted for help. Taken together, our results suggest that i) those who refused to seek help did not differ from those who agreed to seek help on either motivational variables (except for self-efficacy), but ii) those who succeed on the comprehension task after using help were those who showed higher self-efficacy. The implications of these results for future research on the help-seeking process in interactive learning environments are discussed.

The impact of on‐demand metacognitive help on effortful behaviour: A longitudinal study using task‐related visual analytics

“…However, efficient help‐seeking is threatened by two unwanted behaviours: (a) the learners might avoid request help (underuse), or (b) they might excessively ask for hints that explicitly lead to the solution (overuse), without activating deeper thinking mechanisms. For instance, learners might not be motivated to learn, and thus, it is likely that they would not engage in help‐seeking (Hao, Barnes, Wright, & Branch, 2016; Huet, Moták, & Sakdavong, 2016). Some learners might also feel that their learning autonomy is threatened, as they rely on instructors' or peers' assistance, and thus, they might avoid seeking help (Fletcher & Shaw, 2012; Huet et al, 2016).…”

“…For instance, learners might not be motivated to learn, and thus, it is likely that they would not engage in help‐seeking (Hao, Barnes, Wright, & Branch, 2016; Huet, Moták, & Sakdavong, 2016). Some learners might also feel that their learning autonomy is threatened, as they rely on instructors' or peers' assistance, and thus, they might avoid seeking help (Fletcher & Shaw, 2012; Huet et al, 2016). Other learners might continuously seek help because they do not know when they really need it, or might engage in gaming the system behaviour—that is, “attempt to succeed in an educational environment by exploiting properties of the system rather than by learning the material and trying to use that knowledge to answer correctly” (Baker, 2005, p.3)—because they are highly performance oriented (Aleven et al, 2003).…”

“…Contemporary digital learning environments offer numerous options for seeking help. Typical help implementations include worked‐out problems, glossaries or detailed solutions of the on‐going problem (Huet, Escribe, Dupeyrat, & Sakdavong, 2011), hints on the steps required to solve a problem, asking the cognitive tutor to complete the exercise (Vaessen et al, 2014), explanations on errors, instructions for solving the problem, videos demonstrating the solutions (Huet et al, 2016), asking teachers/peers for online help, and online searching (Hao, Wright, Barnes, & Branch, 2016). Help‐seeking is usually coded in terms of frequencies of requests, as patterns of sequences of choices, or as binary options between taking/not‐taking the help.…”

“…In most cases (e.g., Huet et al, 2016; Shih et al, 2008; Vaessen et al, 2014), the help delivered to learners was concerning the knowledge/cognitive domain. Cognitive help has the potential to facilitate deeper thinking and processing mechanisms acknowledged to promote permanent learning gains.…”

Supporting learners’ capacity for autonomous decisions using learning analytics

“…Exploring how motivational factors affect help-seeking has received increased attention in literature, in traditional classroom settings (Mäkitalo-Siegl, Kohnle, & Fischer, 2011;Ryan & Shin, 2011), in cognitive tutors and interactive learning environments (Huet, Moták, & Sakdavong, 2016;Vaessen, Prins, & Jeuring, 2014;Yang & Taylor, 2013) and in online learning [139] conditions (Finney, Barry, Jeanne Horst, & Johnston, 2018;.…”