What authors need to provide

Authors need to provide a lot of information and structure to build an INDIE GBS:

• Domain elements: This includes a domain (such as geology, pet care, etc.) that has been broken down into tests, results of tests in response to various possible scenarios, potential ASK questions and answers, and evidence points for those ASK answers (if needed). They need to know how they want to cross-link this data together, combining questions and answers, results and questions, and tests and responses.

• Teaching points: Authors need to understand what skills they want their students to learn. In Volcano, the skill is volcano prediction through scientific testing. Authors also need to know what other related knowledge students should learn. In Volcano, authors are trying to teach basic volcanology, with incidental knowledge about plate tectonics, the dangers (and excitement) of volcanoes, and how volcanologists deal with real people. Although these teaching points aren't directly entered into the tool, it is certainly necessary to have these points in mind during the design of the GBS.

• Fictional elements: Authors need to pick a scenario that students can get involved in. This is influenced by what is both exciting (e.g. volcano prediction) and pedagogically useful (e.g. diagnosing a tricky immune system case). They need to populate their scenario with characters (usually on videotape), props for the student to work with (such as testing apparatuses and volcanoes), and evidence points referring to their specific scenario. Many projects have more than one scenario.

• Interface information: Authors need to plan what kinds of buttons, menus, and other interface widgets they will use what what those widgets will do. This planning usually starts as drawings of screens and progresses to ideas about exactly what each interface element does when pressed or otherwise manipulated in different circumstances.

• Art: Most GBSes built in INDIE are art-heavy--each screen has a different background, each button has one to three pictures, and most GBSes need charts and graphs to explain test results and help students find their way through the ASK system.

• Video: Every GBS created with INDIE so far has included digitized video. This can be produced with any video camera, from a simple 8mm camera to professional Betacam shoots with paid actors. Video accounts for the vast majority of the disk space INDIE projects take up; Rembrandt has nearly 4 gigabytes of digital movies.