Research on academic help seeking suggests that success is affected by how students identify, select, and access potential study resources. Yet, despite these issues, there is very little research on the actual use and quality of study resources at the university level, either in the traditional face-to-face or in an online setting. The project is re-engineering the study resources that are currently available to undergraduate students in introductory STEM courses. Part of this re-vamping involves expanding the conception of tutoring from face-to-face, one-on-one, private, undocumented encounters to also encompass online, many-to-one, public, archived interactions. The idea is to transform the tutoring experience to support effective student learning using networked computer technology by developing infrastructure for delivering online help with data mining capabilities, developing curricular materials for training undergraduate STEM tutors to work in online communication environments, generating usage, satisfaction, and quality measures for study resources, and studying response to collective versus individual help. This project promotes teaching, training, and learning, both of students and for students, as they do their STEM coursework. The resulting resource will meet the needs of students who are not or cannot be physically on campus or visit the tutoring center when they need help. Also, the anonymity afforded by the resource should encourage students who are otherwise reluctant to seek help. More generally, this project supports the transformation of help seeking from a private, individual activity to a collective, social endeavor that reflects how students of today study.
