You may be aware (or you may not be) that an author has full control over the flexibility of the order of the steps (e.g., through ordered/unordered groups, and by setting to top level to ordered or unordered). In general, we recommend that you make your tutors as flexible as possible with regard to step order, and only impose ordering of steps when there is a strong pedagogical reason to do so (e.g., when a mathematical procedure depends critically on order - e.g., going right to left in multicolumn addition). Perhaps that might avoid the issue?
Another way to avoid (or at least reduce the likelihood of) out of order steps is by making the interface gradually reveal the steps, by means of tutor-performed actions. Though usually you'd still want to reveal multiple new steps at a time (e.g., subgoal by subgoal). This approach might also reduce cognitive load by not showing the complete interface all the time.
Alternatively you could also gradually unlock input boxes that way, although I am not aware of any tutor that does that. It would not have the advantage of possibly reducing cognitive load.
A downside of a flexible step order is that hints (at least when used with certain hint policies, such as "follow errors") cannot depend on prior steps having been completed, which means they could be hard to understand (they may appear a bit "out of context") or need to be written in a way that does not assume that these prior steps have been done. The latter can also be cumbersome.
Selecting the hint policy that follows the preferred path would reduce that problem but then hints don't always follow errors. Perhaps that is OK.
In CTAT, we have an unwritten policy against having "unevaluated input" sitting in the interface elements, so that's why we do not color out-of-order steps in black, though we could revisit that idea.
Sorry, did not mean to go on for so long.
Please keep as posted as to which way you decide to go.
Best,
Vincent
Vincent Aleven
Professor of Human-Computer Interaction
Director of Undergraduate Programs
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Co-Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education