ABSTRACT
Technology’s impact on learning and teaching is increasingly attributable to the exponential growth of computer-mediated communication and the availability of information. The ability to use a few commands or hypertext selections to access a wide variety of databases or contact other individuals can dramatically affect both how and what students learn. Although the consequences of information technology and communication for learning and educational institutions are the subject of continual discussion and debate (e.g., Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1996; Jonassen, 1996), their impact on the incidence and form of help seeking has not been systematically examined. We undertake this analysis by drawing on research in education, library science and information systems, and communications. We begin by describing the changing information environment, the help-seeking process, and how the characteristics of computer-mediated communication (CMC) environments affect that process. Examined next is how the assistance that libraries provide has adapted to technological change and parallels are drawn between the processes of help seeking and information search. We conclude by discussing the implications of changing information technologies for information service professionals, classrooms, and teachers and raise the issue of whether increasingly sophisticated artificial assistance may force us to reconsider the definition of help seeking as necessarily including social agency (i.e., human intervention).
