Help-seeking matters for online learners who are unconfident

Abstract

Online help-seeking refers to a learner's willingness to seek help in online learning environments. Counterintuitively, studies of help-seeking have found mixed results for the relationship between help-seeking and academic achievement. We hypothesized that these mixed findings might, in part, be accounted for by the confidence level of the learner. Utilizing a sample of 321 online university students (M = 32.78 years; SD = 9.53), we explored the moderating effect of self-efficacy in the help-seeking–academic achievement relationship. Aligned with the vulnerability hypothesis, when online learners were confident, they engaged in help-seeking more often than learners with low confidence. Importantly, however, when online learners were unconfident, we found that help-seeking behaviors were positively associated with academic success. Confident learners did not appear to gain any academic performance benefit from using help-seeking strategies. Our study highlights help-seeking's potential importance in improving academic success for our least confident learners, with no impact on confident learners.

Keywords:

• self-efficacy
• help-seeking
• academic achievement
• self-regulated learning
• online learning

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Deakin University for funding support to conduct this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was declared by the authors.

Data availability statement

The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jaclyn Broadbent

Jaclyn Broadbent is Associate Head of School (Teaching and Learning) in psychology and an Associate professor at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University. Jaclyn’s research focuses on online self-regulated learning and the evaluation and translation of effective teaching strategies for student success. Website: http://www.jaclynbroadbent.com

Wren D. W. Howe

Wren Howe is a provisional psychologist currently undertaking the Master of Educational and Developmental Psychology at Monash University and set to begin a PhD exploring the enactment of cultural responsiveness in Australian teachers, from the perspective of Indigenous Australian students.