Indie scenarios are both delivered and authored using web pages. There is no software or plug-in to download and install. All you need is an account.
All scenario information is kept on the server, so students and authors can access scenarios from anywhere. The only requirement is a modern standards-compliant browser, e.g., Internet Explorer 5.5 and above, Firefox 1 and above, Netscape 7.2 and above, Opera 8 and above, and so on. (Safari has not been tested.)
Because Indie scenarios have a uniform structure, authoring is a matter of design and data entry, not programming. For example, in Indie scenarios, students select tests to run, and get results (data) back. To make this happen, the author only has to name the tests and list the results each test returns.
Standard web resources, such as web pages with images and sound files, can be used to provide background reference materials in Indie scenarios. These can be created with any standard web authoring tool, and then uploaded using an Indie file management page for use in a scenario.
The heart of every Indie scenario is the critical reasoning task of differential diagnosis. Given a situation that has to be characterized and a set of possible hypotheses, a student has to collect a body of evidence that argues for a particular claim, and against the alternatives.
An author can specify a list of the candidate hypotheses to be considered. If the author does so, the author can also specify which test results are consistent or inconsistent with which hypotheses. If this information is present, Indie can then provide a preliminary analysis when a student submits an argument for some claim. In particular, Indie can identify a number of features of the argument, including but not limited to:
Copyright © 2002-2005 Christopher K. Riesbeck