Advances in Help-Seeking Research and Applications : The Role of Emerging Technologies

Research on help seeking has primarily focused on classrooms interactions that consist primarily of students asking teachers and peers for help. The rapid emergence of information and communications technologies and interactive learning environments, however, requires expanding the help-seeking landscape and rethinking such critical theoretical issues as the distinction between help seeking and information search, and whether help seeking is inevitably a social self-regulated learning strategy. There is also the need to focus attention on help seeking in the broader learning enterprise, which includes its role in the collaboration process, how to support adaptive rather than the over- or under-reliance on help seeking, as well as to scaffold help-seeking skills that render the process more efficient and useful.

To examine these and other issues, the present volume assembled contributions from internationally recognized scholars and researchers to capture the state of the art and to anticipate future developments in this expanding field. Its relevance extends to anyone attempting to understand the role of technology in education, including educational researchers and teachers who do now or who expect to use technology to support instruction, and the rapidly expanding numbers of those developing new technological applications.

Stuart A. Karabenick, University of Michigan, USAMinna Puustinen, INS HEA, France