Academic help seeking in online Gwa -Weh in Korea

This qualitative ethnographic study explored students' academic help seeking through a web board in a Question and Answer (Q&A) service in an educational web site for primary and secondary school students, which might be called online Gwa-Weh in South Korea. Taking the social constructive approach as a theoretical framework, which focuses on the multiple perspectives inherent in the development and usage of technology, this study explored online academic help seeking based on the experience and perspectives of stakeholders. Specifically, this study described, analyzed, and interpreted patterns of online academic help seeking, its norms and rules, and the values and capacities of the technology.;The ethnographic data was collected through interviews with stakeholders including middle school students who used the Q&A service actively, their parents, their schoolteachers, the online teachers who provided answers in the Q&A service, the company staff, and the company branches, observation of the educational web site where the online academic help seeking took place, and electronic messages on the Q&A web boards.;Regarding academic help seeking patterns, this study found the students' and the online teachers' behavior patterns in using the Q&A service and discussed the issue of students' dependency problem in the online Q&A service. In addition, students' proactive academic help seeking behavior pattern was discussed in terms of students' different interpretations of academic help seeking between online and at school.;With regard to the norms and rules for online academic help seeking, this study found that some norms and rules were agreed upon by the stakeholders, whereas other norms and rules have not yet been agreed upon, and discussed how the disagreed upon norms and rules implied the stakeholders' different interpretations of online academic help seeking.;Regarding the values and capacities of the technology for academic help seeking, this study found specific, various and down-to-earth advantages and disadvantages of the current web board used in the educational web site based on the experience of the students and of the online teachers.