University students' online academic help seeking: The role of self-regulation and information commitments

Abstract

Students' online academic help seeking (OAHS) can be facilitated by the aid of technology, but improvement in OAHS may also involve personal variables such as self-regulated learning (SRL), and 'information commitments' (ICs), which are evaluative standards and strategies of online information. Accordingly, three instruments - an OAHS, an SRL, and an ICs questionnaire - were adopted to explore the role of SRL and ICs in the OAHS of 328 university students in Taiwan. The results verify that the students' perceived SRL mediates the relationships between their perceptions of their ICs and OAHS to some degree. The enhancement of learners' SRL may encourage their use of sophisticated ICs when involved in OAHS. When the students made informal OAHS queries, however, they tended to use less sophisticated strategies, and the significance of their perceived SRL was not apparent. This study contributes to a better understanding of university students' online academic help seeking. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.