Observers are sometimes confused about differences between these two
tools--both have many similar parts, including an expert ASK system
providing
argument-supporting points, claims with BECAUSE and DESPITE
sections, and a similar-sounding goal: make a tough call in a
confusing situation.
The difference lies in the kinds of problems each tool handles well. INDIE is focused on investigation--there is information hidden in a system that students need to discover, and they discover that information by asking experts and (more importantly) probing that world with tests. There is little or no controversy around the implications of the results of the tests--INDIE generally provides a unified model of knowledge about a domain.
Advise focuses more on situations where people use the same facts to come to vastly different conclusions. Popular Advise topics concern problems like drug legalization, censorship, and foreign policy, where fundamental beliefs about the nature of the world will bring people to try strongly different, and usually contradictory, approaches. In Advise, students can usually successfully support any of the plans--the overall conclusion students come to is less important than increasing their knowledge of different perspectives on an issue.
The INDIE project that comes closest to Advise is clearly Rembrandt, where not only are students are given contradictory information about the world, but they need to listen to conjecture and opinion about the paintings from three experts. Only in Rembrandt do students use evidence points gleaned from the ASK system to support arguments--students need to ask ASK questions like, ``Are these brushstrokes characteristic of Rembrandt?''
Despite all of this, Rembrandt remains an INDIE project because although the opinions on some of the cases are contradictory, the overall model of attribution (knowing who painted a painting) is the same from painting to painting. The controversial question is not how art connoisseurs use signatures to determine authenticity, but whether or not this particular signature is really strong evidence one way or another.
Rembrandt's Advise-like use of expert information as supporting evidence in claims turned out to be a design problem--even if students can already identify, say, that these brush strokes are Rembrandtesque, they still must ask experts for their opinions so that they can get the evidence points they need to express that knowledge to the critiquer.
One can approximate an Advise interaction with the general tools that INDIE provides. One can assemble an ASK system, a notebook, claim cards, and an advisor panel with the interface builder and model that INDIE provides. Advise provides more interface structure and more focused critiquing (as discussed below) in return for much less flexibility.