INDIE was not the first GBS tool designed to produce investigate-and-decide GBSes. A forerunner of INDIE at the Institute for the Learning Sciences was ``GBSB,'' which stands for ``Goal Based Scenario Builder.''
At the time of INDIE's conceptualization, the paradigmatic experiment-based GBS was ``Sickle Cell Counselor'' (SCC) [Bell, Bareiss, and Beckwith 1993]. In SCC, the student took on the role of a reproductive counselor. Couples came to this counselor asking for help with their problem--we can't decide if we should have kids due to the danger of their child having sickle cell disease, so can you help us?
Students, who were museum visitors to a larger exhibit about sickle cell disease, chose a couple whose problem interested them and went to a blood laboratory where they looked at their patient's blood with various instruments. Students found out the genetic types of the patients. From there, students explored a Punnett square to see what the chances are that a child of the couple will be healthy, have the sickle cell trait, or have full-blown sickle cell disease. The student then gave advice to the client: Have kids, decide on your own, or don't have kids. In this case, the correct advice is pretty generic--decide on your own--but authors really can't safely give this advice unless they have genetically typed the patients and seen the chart.
SCC was expensive. For a fraction of the cost of SCC (which was high both in terms of time and money--about a year and a half around $120,000 [Bareiss 1998]), it seemed eminently possible to ``clone'' SCC quickly with different content. So, for instance, instead of helping clients concerned about what genetic type their children will be, they could be concerned about what type of gem they had, as exemplified by a project I designed called Gem Detective. Students could run gemological tests on the gem and then suggest the right answer to their clients.