Abstracts - Earli

and learning situations, and the current learning situation, its knowledge content and the otherpeople taking part in it. In distance education, this context is less visible and accessible than in oncampuseducation, and this is even more true for initiatives that extend the university outside itsnormal groups of students and its disciplinary and professional programmes of study. This paper isbased on an extensive study of learning in three such distance initiatives, where it is conjecturedthat flexibility and diversity are the most outstanding features likely to affect the ways in which thestudents experience their own context for learning and thereby affect the quality of that learning.The variation of ways in which these contextual features are revealed to have been experienced byparticipants form the basis of the paper and are related to the specific course contents andpopulations in an emerging model.G 2130 August 2007 08:30 - 10:30Room: -1.62SymposiumWhen learners can control: Guidelines for effective learner-controlledinstructionChair: Saskia Brand-Gruwel, Open university of the Netherlands, NetherlandsOrganiser: Wendy Kicken, Open university of the Netherlands, NetherlandsOrganiser: Gemma Corbalan, Open university of the Netherlands, NetherlandsDiscussant: Peter Gerjets, Knowledge Media Research Center, GermanyCurrent educational theories emphasize the positive effects of providing learners with control overtheir own learning. Learners can be given control over different educational aspects (e.g., pace,sequence, guidance) and in different degrees (i.e., from minimum to maximum; Williams, 1996).However, research on learner control shows inconsistent and even detrimental effects on learningand cautions for its conditional effectiveness. What holds is that "…one can give control to alllearners some of the time and to some learners all the time" (Snow,1980). Hence, research shouldno longer focus on whether learner control is effective, but rather on how to increase itseffectiveness taking into account the specific form of learner control (i.e., educational aspects anddegree) and learners’ characteristics. The researchers in this symposium focus on the effects oflearner control over different educational aspects and providing different degrees of control oncognitive, meta-cognitive and/or affective aspects of learning. Additionally, they provideguidelines to optimise learner-controlled instruction. Swertz discusses the misleading assumptionthat self-directed and teacher-directed learning are contradictory and shows that the integration ofboth needs to be the aim. Hassler gives learners different degrees of control over pacing inlearning by means of narrated computer animations and measures the effect on students’ judgmentof confidence. Corbalan discusses the effects of limited learner control over task-selection onlearning outcomes. Meeus shows how a portfolio can be used as an alternative for a dissertationmodel and its effects on learners’ self-regulation. Kicken presents the effects of a developmentportfolio and task-selection advice on learners’ task-selection skills and self-directed learning.References Williams, M.D. (1996). Learner-control and instructional technologies. InD.H.Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology(pp.957-982). New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Snow, R.E. (1980). Aptitude, learnercontrol, and adaptive instruction. Educational Psychologist, 15(3), 151-158.– 418 –