Online academic help seeking behaviors and online information searching strategies: a study of undergraduate students in Taiwan

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that the Internet has an influence on the learning behavior learners adopt. The measured responses were gathered from 401 university students in Taiwan. This study surveyed through three questionnaires: the Online Information Searching Strategy Inventory (OISSI), the Online Academic Help Seeking scale (OAHS), and the academic self-efficacy from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). By means of exploratory factor analysis and correlation analysis, the relationships were found between students’ online information searching strategies and their online academic help seeking. It was also found that the students used mixed strategies to search online information for academic help and usually employed metacognitive searching strategies to select main ideas or evaluation and then turn to seek for the formal query through path analysis. Furthermore, the students with more academic self-efficacy would focus on procedural online searching strategies such as problem-solving skills and find the answers through the formal way, like asking teachers or experts, in the Internet.