This guide provides several examples of editing a toy Indie scenario. The scenario is 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 will show you how to
Changes you make are made permanent when you click the or the buttons. Feel free to do this. These sample scenarios are restored periodically to their original state.
Open the Indie Scenario Editor on the Mary Smith scenario in a new window. Try the authoring tasks described below.
In the Mary Smith scenario, there is a "take pressure" test, but if a user picks it right now, nothing happens. Assume you want to make this test return a blood pressure of 110 over 70. The sections below will step you through doing this task.
If you are not already on the Indie Scenario Editor page, click the button. This will open the Scenario Editor page.
The button is better than your browser's button. makes sure the page is displaying the most current scenario data.
If you are not looking at the Mary Smith scenario, select Mary Smith from the menu in the upper left corner.
Click on take pressure in the list of tests, and then click on the button. This will open the Indie Test Editor page.
Shortcut: double-click take pressure in the menu.
If "take pressure" already has a test result listed under Possible Results, delete it before proceeding with this task.
Click on the button under the label Possible Results. A dialog box will appear asking for the result text.
Enter the text 110/70, and click the button. That result should now appear in the list of possible results.
To see your new test result in use, click on at the top of the screen. This will save your change and start the scenario in a new window.
In the scenario window, click on the Challenge page. The main scenario page will appear. Click on . The Experiment page will appear. Select and run the take pressure test. You should see the result you typed appear in both the Notebook window and the Results window.
Close the scenario window.
Assume you want to add a "take blood" test to the Mary Smith scenario, with the option to get either a white blood cell count or a red cell count, or both.
Go to the Indie Scenario Editor page, if you are not already there.
If you are not looking at the Mary Smith scenario, select Mary Smith from the menu in the upper left corner.
If "take blood" is already listed under Tests, delete it before proceeding with this task.
Click on the button under the Tests label. A dialog box will appear asking you for the name of the test.
Enter take blood and click . Indie will create the test and open the test in the Indie Test Editor page. The test name should appear to the right of Label:. The remaining fields should all be blank.
The test is not ready to run yet, because there are no results. To add results for "take blood," you first have to specify what a student can look for when doing a blood test."
Some tests, like "take blood," have one or more parameters that have to be specified. For example, you can take someone's temperature in several different ways. In an environmental water pollution scenario, a "sample water" test might have parameters such as:
In Indie terminology, measure would be a parameter, and values such as pH and CO2 would be possible parameter values. When running a "sample water" test, the student would have to specify at least one value for each parameter.
In the Mary Smith scenario, assume you want to add a parameter to "take blood" to let students specify whether to count red or white blood cells, or both.
If you're not currently on the Indie Test Editor page for "take blood," open the Mary Smith scenario and opem "take blood" for editing, by either clicking on take blood and then on or by double-clicking take blood.
If "take blood" has any parameter listed under Parameters, delete it before proceeding with this task.
Click on the button under the Parameters label. A dialog box will appear asking you for the name of the parameter.
Enter count and click . Indie will create the parameter and open the Indie Test Parameter Editor page. The test name and the new parameter should appear on this page.
Now add the two possible counts a student can choose when doing a blood test. Click on the button. A dialog box will appear. Enter red cells, and click . That text should appear in the list of values.
Click on the button again, and enter white cells, and click . There should now be two values in the list of values. (Note: it wouldn't make sense to have a parameter with just one value.)
Now click to return to the Indie Test Editor page. count should be in the list of Parameters.
Now you need to specify what results a student would see if they did a blood test in the Mary Smith scenario.
If a test has parameters, then you need to specify what results a student will see for each parameter value they might select. For example, in a stream pollution scenario, a student might get a very low level of PCB's when selecting one location to sample, and a very high level when selecting another location.
You control which results occur for different choices of parameter values by creating test result rules. First, you add the results. Then for each result, you add a rule that says when that result will occur.
Assume you want to add the following results for Mary Smith's blood test:
If you're not currently on the Indie Test Editor page for "take blood," open the Mary Smith scenario and opem "take blood" for editing, by either clicking on take blood and then on or by double-clicking take blood.
Click on under Possible Results. In the dialog box that appears, enter RBC: 4,400,000/cmm, and click . That result should appear in the list of possible results.
Click again and enter WBC: 9,300/cmm, and click .
Now click on RBC: 4,400,000/cmm in the list of possible results and click on . As a shortcut, you can just double-click the result. The Indie Test Result Editor page will appear.
Since you want this result to appear only when the student asks for a red blood cell count, click on the checkbox to the left of red cells. Click to return to the test.
Do the same thing for the result WBC: 9,300/cmm. This time check the white cells value, and click .
To see your new test result in use, click on at the top of the screen. This will start the scenario in a new window.
In the scenario window, click on the Challenge page. The main scenario page will appear. Click on . The Experiment page will appear. Select and run the take blood test. A new window will appear asking you to what kind of blood cells you want to count. You can check either or both. Check at least one, and then click . The appropriate result or results should appear in both the Notebook window and the Results window.
Close the scenario window.
To quickly check to see if you've forgotten to define results for any tests, or if any test results don't make sense, click on the button at the top of the Indie authoring tool. The Indie Model Checking Report page will appear.
The report first lists how many possible tests a student can run. Then it lists which of those tests, if any, currently yield no results when selected by a student. For tests that take parameters, the report will list every choice of parameter that fails to yield a result.
For example, in its unedited state, the Mary Smith scenario has three tests with no results:
To fix a test, click on the test name in the report to open the Indie Test Editor page for that test.
If you want to see the results of the tests that do work, click on . (NN will be the total number of results.) This can be useful for quickly scanning all the results students might see, to make sure they're consistent and plausible.
To delete a test parameter, open the test for editing in the Indie Test Editor page. Click on the parameter in the list of Parameters. Click on the button next to the list. A dialog box will ask you if you want to delete the parameter. Click .
Try deleting the count parameter from the test "take blood." That parameter should no longer appear under the test take blood. But wait! There's more! Click to check the scenario. Take blood should be listed as having no results, and the rules you created for counting red and white blood cells should be listed as unused. This is because the rules still look for what to count, but there's no way to set the count parameter.
When you delete parameters used by test result rules, you have two options:
To update a rule, open it for editing. Indie will list the currently available parameters, if any, minus the deleted parameter. If you want to save the rule that way, simply click on the rule editing page. Indie will update the rule, leaving out the deleted parameter.
Exercise: Add a parameter to a test, and add a result and rule that uses some value of this parameter. Then delete the parameter and check the scenario. The rule should appear as unused. Click on the rule to edit it, and click on the rule page. Check the scenario again.
To delete a test result, open the test for editing in the Indie Test Editor page. Click on the result in the list of Possible Results. Click on the button next to the list. A dialog box will ask you if you want to delete the result. Click .
Try deleting one or both of the test results for "take blood."
To delete a test, click on it in the list of Tests on the Indie Scenario Editor page. Then click on the button next to the list of tests. A dialog box will appear asking you to confirm that you want to delete the test. Click .
When you delete a test, all the parameters and test results are deleted as well.
Copyright © 2002-2005 Christopher K. Riesbeck