Recommendations Summary
It comes as no surprise that the use of academic support services is associated with student success. Unlike classrooms, academic support services provide students with opportunities for skill development and immediate feedback in a low-risk learning environment. Numerous studies have shown that the use of academic support has a robust, immediate, and long-lasting effect on decreasing anxiety and increasing confidence. These positive outcomes have the potential to affect academic performance and ultimately retention rates. This reality raises the question, how do we encourage and support help-seeking behaviors amongst our students?
Much study has been done on the help-seeking behaviors of students in the academic context. Whether formal or informal, help-seeking can improve academic performance, encourage positive learning, and increase students’ sense of self-efficacy. Previous research on academic help-seeking has demonstrated that seeking assistance from official sources (e.g., teachers and academic service centers) or informal sources (e.g., peers and family) promotes positive learning trends, increased self-efficacy, and enhanced academic performance [19].
Seeking academic help is a learning strategy that can effectively facilitate student learning and ultimately benefit students’ academic performance. The process of help-seeking is outlined by, Karabenick and Dembo in eight steps.
(1) Decide whether a problem exists
(2) Decide whether assistance is required or desired
(3) Determine whether to request assistance
(4) Choose the type of help you want
(5) Choose the person you want to seek for help
(6) Ask for help
(7) Get help
(8) Process the help you got.
Kirkwood has invested in several academic support programs. However, as stated by Johnson et. al, the success of such programs depends mainly on students’ help-seeking behaviors. According to CCSSE data (2023), the frequency at which students use these resources is on par with larger colleges, and most Kirkwood students seemed generally satisfied with their experiences, expressing an 80% or above level of satisfaction. Of those students who expressed dissatisfaction with those resources, themes suggested a desire for more flexibility (how it fits into their schedule) and a higher level of customer service. Currently, we lack data that allows us to determine exactly when students would prefer services were offered, and that data gap is addressed in our recommendations.
However, studies show that approximately 90% of students experience academic problems as a result of stress, lack of planning, anxiety, and depression, but only 15% of students reported seeking help (Saleh et al., 2017). This suggests that a large percentage of our students are not taking advantage of the academic support required to be successful.
In a thorough review of help-seeking behaviors, Fong et al. reccommend the fostering of a “help-seeking culture that discourages brief question and answer exchanges and invites extended periods of scaffolding.”
In an effort to advance Strategic Priority 3-2.2 “Develop a communication plan to inform and promote the use of available academic supports,” our team began by developing a holistic rubric to assess the accessibility and inclusiveness of all major Academic Resources offered at Kirkwood. Upon application of the rubrics, several themes emerged, shedding light on key barriers to using Academic Resources, ranging from lack of awareness to stigma associated with “help-seeking.”
We next examined the most recent Kirkwood institutional data in order to better understand student resource use and perception. This was supplemented by an extensive literature review of recent scholarship, examining the relationship between the use of academic services and student success, the barriers preventing students from accessing resources, and research-backed strategies for increasing engagement.
Based on our work, the committee offers the following recommendations:
- Foster cooperative efforts between academic support services.
- Integrate targeted Academic Resources and Guided Pathways.
- Create student learning communities
- Expand Academic Coaching.
- Embed Academic Resources into existing course content
- Implement processes for gathering and sharing data on student usage and student feedback to inform continual improvement.
- Implement a strategic communications strategy to increase student awareness of Academic Resources.