What is an assignment and what are the types of assignments?

Assignments are used to help the learner to structure the learning process (planning) and to decide on what to do. Assignments can also be used to put the simulation in a certain state in order to point the learner to interesting phenomena. SimQuest offers five different types of of assignments.

Explicitation assignments
Question with the goal to explain a certain phenomena.
Investigation assignments
Question with the goal to explore a part of the simulation to find the relation between two or more variables.
Specification assignments
Assignment with the goal to predict the value of one or more variables, given a certain situation.
Optimisation assignments
Assignment with the goal to perform a task under specified conditions. There could be boundaries by setting minimum and maximum values to the variables or the goal could be to get an optimal result.
Do it / do them assignments
In 'do-it' and 'do-them' assignments the learner is stimulated to perform respectively a specific action or more specific actions in the simulation.