Chapter 7: Analyzing Natural Data to Understand How Students Seek and Obtain Homework Help Online

This chapter deals with computer-mediated student-teacher help-seeking exchanges. In other words, our focus will be on learning situations in which a student communicates with a teacher via information and communication technologies. In such situations help seeking is not only a self-regulated learning strategy employed by the student in order to solve a given problem, but also a situation of social interaction between two persons—a student and an expert—which necessitates the use of social strategies. The way in which the requestor approaches the situation from a social standpoint is revealed by the linguistic forms the person employs. We will show the contribution of examining natural data by presenting the analysis of archives from an online homework help forum that offers adolescents individualized help in mathematics, free of charge (cf. Puustinen, Bernicot, & Bert-Erboul, 2011; Puustinen, Volckaert-Legrier, Coquin, & Bernicot, 2009). Beyond the interest related to the richness and ecological validity of natural data, which reliably reflect students’ real needs, analyzing students’ spontaneous computer-mediated help seeking may contribute to rendering the functioning of such technology-enriched learning situations more effective. In the last section of the chapter, we provide some recommendations addressed to educational technology designers.