Why should you take control into consideration?

To encourage ownership in the environment the learner should be allowed to exercise control over most aspects of the simulation, while the system should exercise as little control as possible. But learners are not always capable to take own responsibility for their actions and the next actions; therefore the learner may need support by the system taking over control.

One of the main challenges for an author is to find a (new) balance between sufficient freedom for learners to regulate their own learning process and guidance of the learning process. In SimQuest authors can give more or less freedom to the learner. Each instructional measure (e.g., explanations or assignments) has state which can assume the values 'disabled', 'enabled', or 'active'. Disabled means that a certain measure (e.g., assignment) is currently not available for the learner, enabled means that the measure is available and that the learner can select and activate it, active means that the instructional measure is activated without the control of the learner. The author can specify the conditions under which a specific instructional measures becomes disables, enabled, or active.

In this way, environment can be designed in which learners can take initiative in the learning interaction by choosing themselves if they need support from the enabled instructional measures and when they need it [3]. Authors, however, can also active instructional measures depending on the states of other instructional measures. For example, finishing a certain assignment may active another assignment. In this way a very compulsory and structured environment may be created by the author. Finally, also a timer in the simulation can be used to control the time the user is working with the simulation. This timer may be used to guide the learner further (e.g., to make a new model progression level available after the learner has worked for some time at a certain model progression level).

The basic design should give as much freedom as possible to the learner, which means enabling all instructional measures so that learners can make their own choice. Control can be taken over by the system if:

• it is expected that learners do not have sufficient planning capabilities to manage their own learning process. However, experience shows that learners may have more managing capabilities than their teachers (and authors) think. The tendency displayed by authors to design very structure environments is therefore often not warranted by the behaviour of the learners;
• remedial actions are needed. For example the learner does not succeed on a certain assignment, in which case the author may decide to start up another assignment, or to display a certain explanation;
• the learner needs to be directed to a specific part of the simulation. For example, after a certain period of time the learner did not yet inspect certain parts of the model, in which case the author may direct the learner to this part (using a timer to monitor the time elapsed).