Help Seeking and Help Design in Interactive Learning
Environments
Vincent Alevin
Elmar Stahl
Silke Schworm
Frank Fischer
Raven Wallace
Interactive Learning Environments
• Intelligent tutoring systems
• Computer-assisted instruction
• Educational hypermedia systems
• Project-oriented learning environments
Steps in seeking help:
• Become aware of need
• Decide to seek
• Identify helpers
• Elicit help
• Evaluate help-seeking episode
“… why do ILEs provide on-demand help at all? Would learners not be better off if help provision was largely or completely under system control?”
Perspectives of Help
• Cognitive skill acquisition
• Tutoring
• Vygotskian
• Complement self-explanations
Complement self-explanations– As much self-explanation as possible, as much
instructional explanation as necessary– Provision of feedback– Provision on learner demand– Minimalism– Progressive help– Focus on principles
“…there is scant evidence in research on teaching that addresses the details of responding to individual student requests for help.”
“… a number of important differences exist between help seeking in social contexts such as classrooms and help seekin g with ILEs.”
Learner Factors
Prior knowledge– of the domain– of the learning environment
Self-regulation
Age
Gender
“Different instructional goals result indifferent types of ILEs whose help systems provide different types of information.”
“Learners often use help systems ineffectively or ignore them altogether. However, when they do use help, learning processes and outcomes may be substantially improved.”
“Different kinds of help may cause different types of help-seeking activities and result in different learning outcomes.”
“Depending on the learning context, the same type of help may trigger different help-seeking behavior, which in turn is related to different effects on learning outcomes.”
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