What is support?

Support is the overall term of all kind of ways to help the learner during the discovery learning process. Each learning process is related to specific kind of support. Support can be categorized onto two main dimensions [1]:

1. the extent of 'directiveness': directive support (assignments) versus non-directive support (explanations);
2. the extent of restrictive support: restrictive support (model progression) versus stimulating support (for example a tool to support the generation of a hypothesis);

Adequate instructional support tries to find the balance between the extremes, thus preserving the discovery nature of learning while providing sufficient guidance. The optimal design of support will evidently depend on characteristics of the learner and/or the domain.