Resource usage and usefulness: academic help-seeking behaviours of undergraduate engineering students

Help-seeking behaviours (HSB) are central to the learning process and have a profound impact on academic success. We explore the HSB of students enrolled in a Mechanical Engineering programme at a large research-intensive university in the U.S. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we examine ten resources available to assist students, the frequency with which students use these resources, the perceived usefulness of these resources and students’ stated rationale in seeking help from specific resources. Results indicate that students use the available resources at different frequencies, but the frequency with which a student uses a resource is not always related to how useful the student perceives the resource to be. Using Exploratory Factor Analysis, resources were divided into two main groups based on frequency of use, which we classify as ‘anchored’ or ‘detached’ based on temporal and spatial accessibility. Patterns emerge in student HSB showing that students access resources in a progression from more detached to more anchored resources. The primary explanatory variable to student HSB is convenience, defined by temporal and spatial accessibility. The more convenient a resource is perceived to be, the more likely a student is to use that resource. © 2018, © 2018 Engineers Australia.