Abstract:

The present study investigates online academic help seeking behaviors and achievement goal orientations of learners in distance education and the relationship between these factors. The research is designed as a quantitative cross-sectional survey study. The participants of the research are 358 learners who took some courses through distance education at a public university. The research data were collected through personal information form, online academic help seeking questionnaire, and achievement goal orientation scale. For the analysis of the research data and to answer the research questions of the study, descriptive statistics, t-test, and correlation analysis were used. Research findings show that learners in distance education use the Internet the most for online academic help seeking. In addition, learners applied to their friends or someone who knew the subject to seek help more frequently than their instructors. In this context, learners seek academic help from at least the faculty members, compared to others. The results also showed that, in terms of learners' achievement goal orientations, the learning-approach and performance-approach goal orientations are higher than the learning-avoidance and performance-avoidance goal orientations. In addition to these findings, a limited and positive relationship between learners’ achievement goal orientations and online academic help seeking behaviors was found. This result can be interpreted as the achievement goal orientations of learners is not a significant predictor of online academic help seeking behaviors.

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