What to Do in KidClinic: John Doe

This guide provides several examples of things students can do in an Indie scenario. KidClinic: John Doe is a toy example of something you might build to teach kids about the different symptoms for common medical problems and how a doctor uses diagnostic reasoning to tell them apart. This guide shows examples of how a student:

starts a scenario and receives and opening challenge
accesses reference material
runs tests to gather evidence
assembles a report using that evidence to argue for some conclusion

To start the scenario, click here. A separate window will open with the KidClinic: John Doe scenario. Keep this guide window open and try doing the actions described below.

Challenge Page

The first page you'll see is the Challenge, describing the problem you need to solve. Behind the scenes it's a simple HTML file.

Click Continue to move on.

Reference Page

The next page you'll see is the Reference Page. This comes automatically with basic help on how to use Indie. With the authoring tool, you can modify this material, and add other files and links to these pages relevant to your scenario.

A student can return to this page at any time by clicking on Reference at the top of the page.

Click Experiment to see how to run tests.

Experiment Page

This page is where students gather data by running tests. When you first start, there is no data.

To see what tests you can run, click on the menu on the right under the label Test. From that menu, select take temperature.

A description of that test should appear just below. This description is again just a simple HTML file.

To run this test, click Run Test. Because two ways have been defined for taking a temperature, a new page appears where you say whether you want to take temperature in the mouth or the ear.

You can click on one of the options or both of them. If you select both, you'll get two readings. Try that. Click on both checkboxes, then click on Order Test.

A dialog box will inform you that you have two new test results. (In more complex scenarios, you may be told that the results will arrive in some number of simulated days.) You will then be shown the Experiment Page again. On the left you should now see the two test results.

There are two views of the test results. On the lower left is an HTML window meant to show results in the most readable way. Scenario authors can use tables to present the results in a clear way. Above the HTML window is a the Notebook, where all results are kept as individual items in a list. The Notebook is important for constructing the report, so let's go to the Report Page.

Click Report to see how to create a report.

Report Page

The Report Page is where you use the test results to argue for an hypothesis. On the left is the same Notebook that appeared on the Experiment Page. On the right is an Argument Constructor. To construct an argument, select one of the possible hypotheses from the Diagnoses menu, then select evidence from the notebook to support it.

Since the patient seems to have a fever, select Flu from the Diagnosis menu. To support this claim, click on one of results in the Notebook, e.g., click on "102 F" to select it and then click on Use Evidence. "102 F" should now appear under the Flu diagnosis.

Let's assume you think this is enough evidence and you are ready to submit your report. In this scenario, you need to include an email address to which feedback can be sent. In the demo, there should be a dummy email address already entered. If not, enter guest@dummy.net into the Email text field at the bottom of the page. Then click Submit Report. Because this is a demonstraion, no actual email will be sent.

The Feedback Page

Because this is just a demonstration, the last page we show you is a dummy feedback page, showing the information that an instructor or evaluator would see. It contains two parts. On top are the claim and evidence that has been submitted. On the bottom is a sample of the output of the Argument Analysis that can help the instructor or evaluator assess the report.

An analysis is an optional part of Indie. It will be be generated automatically if the scenario author has identified a fixed set of possible conclusions, and connected various test results positively or negatively to these conclusions. This is not required for an Indie scenario. A scenario can be totally open-ended, in which case the instructor will simply get the student's report, with no analysis attached.