Help-Seeking as a Design Problem: An Exploratory Framework for College Science and STEM Instruction

College science instructors often encourage students to use academic support, from office hours and tutoring to supplemental instruction and peer learning. Yet availability alone does not ensure that students can use those supports productively. This exploratory comparative multiple-case study examined four undergraduates’ reconstructed help-seeking episodes in science and STEM coursework at a public university. Using journey maps and semi-structured interviews, we traced how students interpreted difficulty, decided whether to work independently or seek assistance, and evaluated the help they encountered. Across cases, difficulty first had to become help-seekable. Learning environments could add friction or make assistance easier to reach. Trusted relationships made support networks more actionable, but reaching help still did not guarantee support students could use for learning. We synthesize these findings in an exploratory usable-support framework organized around four overlapping conditions: visible, reachable, trusted, and usable. For each condition, we describe course-level design responses, including options for time-constrained courses with laboratories, that instructors can adapt and test so that academic difficulty can more readily become productive assistance.