Help abuse

When student use a tutoring system that gives hints upon request, they sometimes ask for hints when they don't really need them. This is called help abuse.

A particularly vivid type of help abuse can occur when the tutoring system uses a hint sequence. Student sometimes click so rapidly on the "explain more" button that they have no time to read the hints. They stop when they reach the last, Bottom-out hint, which tells them exactly what to do next. They typically study the bottom-out hint for sometime, then dismiss the hint, and enter do what it says to do (or try to). Some students will do this on every step in a problem.