Surveying the Relationships Between Students’ Epistemic Curiosity and Their Online Academic Help Seeking Behaviors in Higher Education

Abstract

This study initiated an attempt to explore the role of students’ epistemic curiosity, the desire to obtain intellectual information to fill the gaps in one’s knowledge, in their online academic help seeking behaviors in higher education. There were 113 undergraduate and graduate students surveyed in this study. The results showed that the students had more experiences of searching information online and strong epistemic beliefs about seeking help when encountering academic challenges. It was also found that while the beliefs about perceived benefits from online academic help seeking might foster the students’ behaviors of information searching and formal query from teachers, their experiences of informal query from peers were significantly predicted by their perceptions of self-efficacy for seeking helps. There were strong significant relationships between the students’ I-type epistemic curiosity (stimulating intellectual interest) and their experiences of information searching. On the other hand, the students’ D-type epistemic curiosity (eliminating feelings of informational deprivation) was strongly related to their experiences of formal and informal query. Moreover, I-type epistemic curiosity may play a more important role in the students’ beliefs about online academic help seeking than D-type epistemic curiosity does. This study is still ongoing with larger sample for verifying the academic evidences.