Research on help seeking has primarily focused on classrooms interactions that consist primarily
of students asking teachers and peers for help. The rapid emergence of information and
communications technologies and interactive learning environments, however, requires
expanding the help-seeking landscape and rethinking such critical theoretical issues as the
distinction between help seeking and information search, and whether help seeking is inevitably a
social self-regulated learning strategy. There is also the need to focus attention on help seeking in
the broader learning enterprise, which includes its role in the collaboration process, how to
support adaptive rather than the over- or under-reliance on help seeking, as well as to scaffold
help-seeking skills that render the process more efficient and useful.
To examine these and other issues, the present volume assembled contributions from internationally recognized scholars and
researchers to capture the state of the art and to anticipate future developments in this expanding field. Its relevance extends to anyone
attempting to understand the role of technology in education, including educational researchers and teachers who do now or who expect
to use technology to support instruction, and the rapidly expanding numbers of those developing new technological applications.