Searching for help vs. having it handed to you: the relative advantages of index-accessed help and context-sensitive help

Help from virtual pedagogical agents has the potential to improve student learning. Yet students often do not seek help when they need it, do not use help effectively, or ignore the agent’s help altogether. This paper seeks to better understand ...

To compare different methods of accessing and presenting on-line help, controlled experiments were conducted. Several different help systems were compared, including a natural language help system and a human tutor. The results indicate that, while ...

We tested effects of dissuading students from requesting help unless they really needed it. The manipulation occurred while the students solved problems on an ITS that provided proactive help. Compared to their counterparts, dissuaded students requested ...