In adult online training that already uses dynamic task difficulty, adaptive hint‑gating, and post‑session reflection to manage productive struggle, does giving learners direct control over a simple “support slider” (letting them choose, within narrow bounds, how strict hint‑gating is for the next block) improve long‑term retention, transfer of skills, and calibration of illusions of learning more than leaving all hint‑gating fully system‑controlled—and under what conditions do learner‑controlled sliders instead increase social loafing or avoidance of desirable difficulty?

Answer

Learner‑controlled support sliders are plausibly a small net gain over fully system‑controlled hint‑gating for calibration and, to a lesser extent, retention/transfer only when:

• the slider range is narrow and pre‑vetted to keep everyone in productive struggle,
• defaults are conservative (mildly effortful), and
• the UI gives very simple, concrete feedback about what the current setting means for upcoming help.

Even then, expected benefits are modest and mainly metacognitive (better sense of “how much help I tend to need”) rather than large learning‑gains. There is no direct evidence on this exact manipulation; this is theory‑driven extrapolation.

Sliders are more likely to hurt (more avoidance of difficulty, social loafing in shared contexts, and preserved illusions of learning) when:

• learners are low‑knowledge or anxious,
• the slider can move to very high‑support zones,
• there is little explanation or feedback about consequences, or
• group work means high‑support choosers can “ride along” on others’ effort.

Net: treat a support slider as a small, risky optimization—use tightly bounded ranges, learner‑friendly defaults, and simple framing; avoid in low‑safety or strongly group‑dependent work unless you couple it with individual accountability signals.