Observations on Student Help-Seeking Behaviors in Introductory Computer Science CoursesIn-Person
The help-seeking interactions faculty encounter will vary depending upon the course structure and the students enrolled. While the course structure tends to remain the same, the students enrolled change each semester, presenting a new set of students who seek help in many different ways. We share our observations in investigating student behavior when using course resources, including office hours and online discussion forums, in two introductory computer science courses. Our goal is to explore differences in help-seeking behavior to construct Student “Help-Seeking” Personas. Preliminary analysis has shown that, for these two introductory CS courses, there are no well-defined personas that emerge from the grouping of help-seeking behaviors. The demographic of students exhibiting various help-seeking behaviors tends to be a near-proportionate subset of the overall course demographic. Thus, no distinct personas emerge from the students’ help-seeking behaviors in introductory CS courses that faculty can utilize to better understand their students.