Another GBS tool that has similar functionality to INDIE is Advise [Korcuska 1998,Herman 1998]. In an Advise application, students play the role of an advisor to a group with some large, complicated problem. An example is the student working as a foreign policy expert advising the President of the United States on a diplomatic crisis in a situation similar to the one the US faced in Bosnia in the early 90s, which is the cover story for a GBS called ``Crisis in Krasnovia.''
The students' goal is to write a report that supports a plan (or set of plans) to reach the goals the President has delineated. Students gather evidence from real-world experts in the form of points that appear after they hear stories in a large system-wide ASK system (Krasnovia had 400 or so stories).
The activity in Krasnovia, as in all Advise GBSes, focuses around supporting a plan of students' choosing, such as a military intervention. The President has goals that include minimizing civilian pain and suffering, increasing stability in the region, and maintaining the status and dignity of the United States. Each plan has a ``claim card'' for each goal. Students have the opportunity to make a claim on each card about each plan/goal combination in the following manner:
``The [plan] will have a [very positive/positive/negative/very negative] effect on [goal] for the following reasons:''
Students then have two boxes that they can fill with evidence--essentially BECAUSE and DESPITE like Rembrandt's critiquer. When they believe they have completely supported a claim by dragging in evidence points they have collected from experts, they can submit the claim card. At this point, a panel of around 4 advisors react to both the students' rating of the plan and the evidence they have used to support it.
Students can talk to each advisor using an ASK system. As they do, they discover that each advisor has a particular ``take'' on the problem; in Krasnovia, one advisor is strongly in favor of military action while another advisor completely disagrees with him. Advisors suggest relevant expert stories for students to think about as they make their claims, and no claim card can be successfully submitted until each advisor has ``signed off'' on it (in other words, stopped generating critiques about it).
Once students have gotten what they feel is a reasonable number of claim cards past their advisors, they submit their entire report including an overall claim about the plans. The overall claim can support some subset of the plans or say that none of the plans stands out as succeeding on the goals as stated. The critiquing engine checks the student on whether or not they have made a complete argument in favor of the claim they made about the plans--is their argument coherent (i.e., have they made claims about plan/goal combinations that are consistent with their overall claim)? Have they supported their favored plan well? Have they correctly rejected the other plans?