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Public forum help barnes 1

Public forum help barnes 1

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PUBLIC FORUM HELP SEEKING: THE IMPACT OF

PROVIDING ANONYMITY ON

STUDENT HELP SEEKING BEHAVIOUR

David J. Barnes

ABSTRACT

We investigate the impact of providing anonymity to a group of undergraduate Computing students, in order to

encourage them to seek help for course related questions. We supplemented traditional help seeking mechanisms -

such as personal visits to a lecturer, electronic mail and a bulletin board news system – with a Web-based question

and answer page. The Web page allowed questions to be sent directly to a member of the course team, but

guaranteed anonymity to the help seeker. In our analysis, we focus on providing a comparison between usage of

the Web-based page and the local course-specific bulletin board. Both provide a similar model of public forum

help seeking, in which a question is asked by an individual and seen by all those on the course. Among our

conclusions is that the anonymous page was at least as important as the news system in supporting help seeking,

both in terms of the numbers of questions asked, and the number of users. Although not all students used the page

to ask a question, many used it as a source of answers to their own questions, reducing the requirement on staff to

answer repetitive questions. Comments from some students suggested that the anonymous environment was also

more comfortable for them to use; this is an important factor in overcoming a reluctance to seek help that is a

familiar problem to teachers.

KEYWORDS

Help seeking, anonymity, Computer Science Education, WWW, bulletin board news, computer mediated

communication, CMC, student learning support.

OVERVIEW

Studies of educational help seeking are often conducted through questionnaires about intended

behaviour rather than actual behaviour[13,14,16]. Students are asked about the factors that

affect their help seeking behaviour, and the circumstances that make it either less or more

likely that they will seek help. In this paper we describe our practical experiences providing a

Web-based question and answer page that allowed students to ask course-related questions

with guaranteed anonymity. Each question asked was added to the page along with its answer,

providing a dynamic but readily accessible resource for the full length of the course. In this

respect, the page provided a public forum in which all members of the course saw both

questions and answers. In order to gauge its effectiveness, we compare its usage with that of a

related public forum, namely, a bulletin board news system in which both questions and

answers are available to all, but identity is not hidden. We compare these two approaches by

examining the numbers and types of question asked in both. We also present data to estimate

the proportion of the course that made use of the environments to seek help, and a sample of

student comments on the provision of the Web page.

In the remainder of this paper we discuss the motivation for the work and the educational

context in which it was conducted. We then describe the nature of the Web page, the way in

which it provided anonymity, the alternative bulletin board news system and the other help

seeking resources available to the students. In our discussion of the results we give raw data on

the numbers of questions asked and indicators of the numbers of students who asked them. We

go on to provide a comparative analysis of the numbers and styles of questions asked. Finally,

we discuss the results and present our conclusions.

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MOTIVATION 
 
Reluctance to seek help, as a result of social reservation, is a well-recognised phenomenon in 
an educational context. It applies throughout the age spectrum: in children[14], adolescents[16] 
and adults[11]. For instance, Graesser and McMahen[11] expect that, “Questions will be more 
frequent … [where] social context removes barriers to asking questions.” Where assessment is 
involved, students frequently cite concerns about loss of marks if they receive help from staff 
and prefer to struggle on in ignorance. Ryan and Pintrich[16] express the opinion that students 
actually put themselves at a disadvantage when they fail to seek the help they need. 
 
The work we describe grew out of earlier efforts to encourage students to ask questions about 
assignments for a second year Undergraduate course in Software Engineering[3]. Frustration at 
receiving assignment work that clearly missed the mark in terms of what was required, led us 
to  appreciate  that  some  students  simply  felt  unable  to  ask  for  assistance.  In  an  effort  to 
overcome this reluctance, a web page that allowed anonymous submission of questions was 
made an  integral part  of  a  future assignment’s  presentation[7]. In that particular context, the 
experience was doubly valuable because it also provided practical reinforcement of the need 
for  refinement  of  software  specifications.  Success  with  this  approach  led  us  to  attempt  to 
extend its applicability to a whole course, rather than a single assignment. It is this subsequent 
work that we describe here. 
 
EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT 
 
The context of this work is a double-unit first-year undergraduate course in Object-Oriented 
Design  and  Programming[6]  delivered  by  the  Department  of  Computer  Science[8]  at  the 
University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC)[19]. UKC was founded in 1965 and currently hosts 
approximately 6000 full-time undergraduate students. The Department is part of the Faculty of 
Science,  Technology  and  Medical  Studies,  which  accounts  for  around  25%  of  the 
undergraduate  population.  The  course  was  compulsory  for  approximately  160  students  on 
single and joint  honours  Computing  degrees. The  majority of these students  were from  the 
United Kingdom. The course ran for the full length of the 1997-98 academic year. As a double-
unit course, it represented 25% of the students’ first year programme. 
 
The  course  consisted  of  a  two-week  introduction  to  the  host  computing  environments  –  a 
combination of Windows NT and X Windows on UNIX – followed by approximately twenty 
weeks of  design and  programming in Java™[1]. Students were required to demonstrate their 
competency  in  usage  of  the  host  environments  and  various  tools  by  taking  a  supervised 
practical  ‘driving  test’  within  the  first  few  weeks.  The  test  included  use  of  electronic  mail, 
searching for and bookmarking Web pages, posting messages to a local bulletin board news 
group, and compiling and running a simple Java program. These skills were considered to be 
vital to survival on the course. In particular, much of the teaching and assignment material, and 
course-related information for the whole degree programme was delivered via per-course Web 
pages,  and  three  bulletin  board  news  groups  each  dedicated  to  one  year  of  the  Computing 
programme.  
 
THE ANONYMOUS HELP SEEKING WEB PAGE 
 
The anonymous help seeking page was run as a local-access page maintained by the author, 
who  was  also  jointly  responsible  (with  one  other  lecturer  colleague)  for  maintaining  the 

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PUBLIC FORUM HELP SEEKING: THE IMPACT OF PROVIDING ANONYMITY ON STUDENT HELP SEEKING BEHAVIOUR David J. Barnes ABSTRACT We investigate the impact of providing anonymity to a group of undergraduate Computing students, in order to encourage them to seek help for course related questions. We supplemented traditional help seeking mechanisms such as personal visits to a lecturer, electronic mail and a bulletin board news system – with a Web-based question and answer page. The Web page allowed questions to be sent directly to a member of the course team, but guaranteed anonymity to the help seeker. In our analysis, we focus on providing a comparison between usage of the Web-based page and the local course-specific bulletin board. Both provide a similar model of public forum help seeking, in which a question is asked by an individual and seen by all those on the course. Among our conclusions is that the anonymous page was at least as important as the news system in supporting help seeking, both in terms of the numbers of questions asked, and the number of users. Although not all students used the page to ask a question, many used it as a source of answers to their own questions, reducing the requirement on staff to answer repetitive questions. Comments from some students suggested that the anonymous environment was also more comfortable for them to use; this is an important factor in overcoming a reluctance to seek help that is a familiar problem to teachers. KEYWORDS Help seeking ...
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