Examining Decision-Making Processes and Heuristics in Academic Help-Seeking and Instructional Environments
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Examining Decision-Making Processes and Heuristics in Academic Help-Seeking and Instructional Environments Joan Giblin 1 & Jill Stefaniak 2 Accepted: 5 November 2020 # Association for Educational Communications & Technology 2020
Abstract College students often need to seek academic help, especially in online environments. Students may choose from variety of options for help, including their instructor, the internet, and friends. Current research efforts fail to fully explain undergraduate students’ source selection process available in a real-world context. A holistic, learner-centered approach to understanding the decision-making process may result in more effective instructional practices to increase student help-seeking behavior. This study explored how college students describe their decision-making process regarding the selection of help-seeking sources. Interviews were conducted with 25 undergraduate students in their third or fourth year of study to explore their decision-making process when selecting academic help sources. Several themes emerged from the data regarding how participants described their decision-making process checkpoints. The examination of decision-making heuristics may provide a new method to explore help-seeking behavior. Implications for further research exploring decision-making processes associated with academic helpseeking are discussed. Keywords Academic help-seeking . Decision-making heuristics . Instructional environments
Many learners require assistance to understand new concepts (Ryan, Pintrich & Midgley, 2001). While universities provide formal academic support services for undergraduate students such as tutoring, supplemental instruction, advising and information sessions, the responsibility of selecting and accessing help rests with the student (Rheinheimer, Grace-Odeyleye, Francois, & Kusorgbor, 2010). The proliferation of highquality online help sources further complicates the decisionmaking process. Despite decades of research, a comprehensive understanding of how undergraduate students select their source of help remains elusive (Karabenick, 2011). This study explored the decision-making process of undergraduate students in an advanced math class who selected a source of help. Despite a theoretical grounding in selfregulated learning emphasizing the agency of the learner, previous academic help-seeking researchers predominantly utilized quantitative survey research designs. Quantitative * Jill Stefaniak [email protected] 1
Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
2
University of Georgia, 221 Rivers Crossing, 850 College Station Road, Athens, GA 30602, USA
research designs force participants to select their response from a pre-defined list. These lists restricted the sources of help to humans, failed to incorporate online sources of assistance, and ignored the decision making process students undertake during the source selection process. A learnercentered investigation of the help selection process through a decision-making lens will result in a
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