Educators would agree than learning is an outcome of the total college experience that includes both in-class and out-of-class experiences. Due to the high-risk nature of several courses, including principles of accounting, most universities have some form of academic support system available for students to help them succeed. This array of out-of-class experiences can contribute to the mastery of their accounting principles classes. Yet as accounting educators, how often have we felt that those students who could benefit most from pursuing assistance do not ask for help? Why does this appear to be the case?

     Prior research suggests that four factors appear to influence students' tendencies to seek assistance with schoolwork. These factors include: how teachers promote or react to helping situations, whether students perceive helping episodes as self-esteem threatening experiences, whether students associate lack of intelligence with their ability to succeed in a particular class, and what kind of personal/social environment which they live in.

     To learn more about students' help-seeking behaviors, we had 431 students from two Midwestern universities who were enrolled in Principles of Accounting I and II complete an Academic Assistance survey instrument. We sought to identify which sources of assistance students used most frequently, how they were valued, whether seeking assistance threatened their self-esteem, and what specific circumstances were likely to decrease attempts to seek help.

     The sources of assistance available, including usage and value is provided in Table 1. Usage reflects the number of students who reported using the source at least once during the semester. Value was assessed using a five-point scale from poor (1) to excellent (5). The majority of students sought academic assistance from friends and classmates most frequently. This makes sense. Many students typically prepare for their classes during evenings and weekends and their friends are more accessible than any other sources of assistance. The next most popular sources of help were the instructor, immediately before or after class in the classroom, and the study guide that accompanies the principles of accounting text. Sources used least were videotapes on reserve at the library and e-mail. The low use of videotapes may be a result of the inconvenience associated with this form of assistance. Having to make a trip to the library and then spending time watching the tapes may have been perceived as too time consuming. The low use of e-mail can be explained in part by the fact that this form of access was only available through class accounts on an instructional server and not all instructors had class accounts.

TABLE 1

Sources ofAssistance	Usage	Good/Excellent	Mean Value
College friend/classmate	88%	87%	3.5
Instructor (before/after class)	60%	92%	3.8
Text study guide	59%	88%	3.6
Solutions manual	41%	84%	3.5
Instructor (office visit)	39%	91%	3.8
Family/relatives	30%	78%	3.4
Accounting department tutors	23%	82%	3.3
Computerized tutorials	23%	70%	3.2
Instructor (via phone call)	17%	82%	3.4
Counseling center tutors	10%	82%	3.4
Videotapes	7%	54%	2.7
Instructor (via e-mail)	3%	575	2.9

     In terms of assigning a value to each source (poor to excellent), interaction with faculty via an office visit, before or after class, or by phone received the highest ratings of all the sources used. Ninety-two percent of the students who consulted their instructor rated the help received above average. In fact all but two sources of assistance, videotapes and e-mailing faculty, were rated above average. The less than average ratings for videotapes may suggest that content and quality need to be improved by the publishers. As for e-mail consultations, written questions and explanations may be less clear due to the inability of both parties to confirm their understanding which is the case when the interaction is conducted in person. Also, e-mail responses might not be timely.

     When asked to describe their feelings about the act of requesting assistance, 69% of the students considered the experience as a positive way to solve a problem. Another 12% considered the process an unpleasant, but necessary activity required for passing the class. Only 3% of the students saw seeking assistance as a situation they avoided because it was associated with personal admissions of failure. No opinion was expressed by 16.3%. Next we asked students the extent to which they viewed using each form of assistance as a personal admission of failure. This time the number of students who associated negative self-esteem with help-seeking increased. With the exception of using videotapes or computerized tutorials, as many as 15 to 20% of the students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that seeking help from each particular source was a personal admission of failure. These findings held true for students from both universities as well as for accounting and business majors.

     Finally, students were asked to rate fourteen circumstances as to the likelihood (never to always) of influencing their help-seeking behaviors. These circumstances are referenced in Table 2. Conditions associated with students' personal and social environment as well as circumstances that threaten self-esteem appear to be the prevalent conditions that tend to decrease the likelihood that certain students will request assistance. The primary condition identified as most likely to affect students seeking assistance was their busy work/class schedule. Other circumstances reported by at least 50% of the students as likely to affect their pursuit of assistance were fear of being questioned, performance anxiety, being inconvenienced and feeling unwelcome. The least likely factors cited as deterring requests for assistance were task-specific ability (math skills), inability to reciprocate (repay friends for help provided), and dislike of accounting. Lastly, how teachers react to helping situations also appears to contribute to the probability of some students seeking assistance.

TABLE 2

Circumstances Affecting Help Requests
Conditions	Sometimes/always
Busy work/class schedule	71%
Fear of being questioned	57%
Performance anxiety	55%
Being inconvenienced	51%
Feeling unwelcome	50%
Being an imposition	46%
Availablity of the source	45%
Feeling embarassed	43%
Lack of encouragement	43%
Feeling intimidated	42%
Feeling incompetent	33%
Dislike of accounting	31%
Inability to reciprocate	28%
Task-specific inability	27%

     Faculty should be aware of the reasons cited by students that impact their likelihood of requesting assistance, particularly those that threaten students' self-esteem. To what extent do we intimidate students? To what extent do we make them feel welcome or does our behavior send signals that requesting help is an imposition? Are we accessible? We can control some circumstances and, obviously, we cannot control others. Faculty who want to increase student help-seeking might consider:

• Providing frequent feedback to students using a variety of classroom assessment techniques.
• Becoming more sensitive to students' self-esteem, so that helping episodes are as non-threatening as possible.
• Demonstrating a concern for enhancing student learning opportunities.
• Sharing personal information with students (hometown, sports interests, hobbies, etc.) to establish rapport and lessen intimidation.
• Demonstrating computer-assisted tutorials in class.
• Publicizing accounting department tutoring hours.
• Including your e-mail address and perhaps home phone number in your syllabus.
• Scheduling some departmental tutoring hours when accounting principles students are more likely to be studying.
• Scheduling some office hours during the evening.
• Coming to class as early as possible.
• Minimizing the number of new questions posed in response to student questions.
• Discussing performance anxiety in class.
• Keeping the office door open as a sign of welcome.

     Our study revealed that students are seeking assistance more than we thought and from a variety of sources. Most students have a healthy attitude toward seeking assistance and the quality of the assistance available is quite satisfactory. How we react to students and the impressions we portray is perhaps more influential than we realized? We need to remember to model the interpersonal skills we expect our students to have. After all, students need to be encouraged to view requests for assistance as a normal part of the life-long learning process.

(From the authors' article "An Assessment of the Academic Support System Available to Principles of Accounting Students," The Accounting Educators' Journal (Fall 1998): 44Ð55.)