Auto-connection mechanisms for educational virtual laboratory

Construction kits are useful educational tools that provide children with many learning opportunities. However, to support learners in effective leaning through construction processes, it is necessary to provide appropriate support to the learners according to their skills or knowledge. We have developed a Web-based interactive virtual laboratory with a construction kit, where users can assemble primitive components into a biker model powered by a solar cell. In this paper, we have proposed auto-connection mechanisms for supporting different types of users and different learning scenarios in the laboratory. Since this auto-connection setting can be changed during runtime by users according to the learners' skills, teachers can provide different settings for each learner without resorting to complicated programming.