The role of metacognitive skills in learning to solve problems

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given in the next quarter about the type of events just played and the
possible interventions one should have chosen. An Advisor is activated
when the value of certain knowledge indicators drops below a threshold
value. This is an indication that Coltec is not performing well. If this is
the case, then advice is given with respect to the types of interventions
one could choose in order to increase the values of the indicators mentioned.
For instance, when the status of the indicators for properties
of knowledge development processes in the production department has
dropped below 4.5 then advice is given to focus on training people and
implementing organisational changes.
Reflection is supported in the MONITOR phase of the KM model.
Players are required to write a yearly report that focuses on what problems
were encountered, how these problems were solved and what went
well and what went wrong. This enables reflecting on the problem solving
process and identifying strong and weak points.
The game is strongly geared towards collaboration. Players are organised
in teams of three members. They communicate with each other
in a central chat facility (the telephone in the office). All activity templates
in the KM model have a chat facility available, too. This supports
topic-related communication. The activities in the KM model require
collaboration. Collaboration is supported by the presence of shared work
spaces. Players, for instance, have to choose a focus on specific knowledge
departments or processes or they have to formulate an adequate
interpretation of an event which requires free-text writing areas. In order
to implement interventions players have to agree on a set of interventions
decided upon earlier in the KM model. This is supported by an
electronic voting system. Once all players agree on a (set of) interventions,
the game progresses to the next quarter in which a new event is
presented. In order to keep track of each other in the game, a special
function called Group call is implemented in KM Quest. Players can invite
each other to a specific location in the game. The invitation can be
accepted or rejected. Acceptance results in a ‘tele-transportation’ of a
player from a current location to the desired location. This allows teams
to gather quickly.
In conclusion, KM Quest is designed in such a way that in theory it
is a suitable learning environment that is consistent with the constructivist
paradigm. So, this environment is used in the empirical studies
described in the next three chapters.