Friday’s Lesson
Using the What-If Builder

Should a tree be cut down in your neighborhood? What if fishermen catch too many fish? What happens if we run out of oil? Each of these scenarios has issues and consequences to consider when making a decision.

A software program developed by The Concord Consortium’s Center for a Sustainable Future, in partnership with Cobb County Public Schools in Georgia, can help students think about these kinds of questions. What-If Builder is a tool for creating scenarios or stories with multiple endings that depend on the choices the reader makes. The program can be used in two distinct ways: to run stories others have made and to create your own.

What-If Builder

What-If Builder is very simple to use. Students pick it up quickly, so little classroom time needs to be spent on mastering the technology.

When running a “What if…” story, students work individually or in groups role playing and debating an issue from different points of view. What-If Builder operates the same way many computer games do: reflecting different perspectives depending on choices the player makes. But unlike a traditional computer game, What-If Builder encourages students to ask questions, vote, and think deeply about the consequences of their choices.

If students using one scenario don’t agree with the consequences built into the story, or feel that other choices should be available, they can easily switch to an editing mode and change the story. Justifying these changes encourages research and investigation of the probable impacts of different choices.

Student thinking is stimulated by using, editing, and creating new scenarios. This can be a strong stimulus to deeper inquiry in almost any field. The point is not to come up with the “right” answer, but to promote visioning and thinking about the future.

Download What-If Builder

What-If Builder software is free and easy to download, and it is compatible with Windows and Mac on all operating systems.

If you are on a PC, point your browser (Internet Explorer works best) to the following URL for downloading instructions: http: //www.concord.org/esf/resources/software/wib/install.htm

On a Mac, point your browser (Internet Explorer works best) to the following URL to download: ftp://ftp.concord.org/pub/esf/wib/mac/wib.sit (When running OS X, launching a What-If Builder story automatically invokes the Classic operating system.)

A successful download should result in a folder that contains documentation, sample stories, and What-If Builder.

Try Out a Story

A good way to get started is to try one of the sample stories, for example, the Fish Story. The scenarios are purposely simple so that the software is not intimidating. (When the What-If Builder opens, two windows appear: the What-If Builder and the Decision Tree.)

To open a story:

• On a Mac, open the WIB folder, and then double-click on a story inside the Sample Stories folder.
• On a Windows computer, launch What-If Builder and select Open from the File menu on the What-If Builder window. Select one of the stories from the Sample Stories folder.

Read the first section of the story, then choose from the selections below it by clicking the “Go ->” button next to your choice. As you make decisions and follow one path of the story, you can also click the “Go Back” button to try a different path. The stories aren’t very long, so feel free to explore all of the paths.
If you select Edit Mode from the Tools menu, you can see the complete Decision Tree for the story. Clicking the plus (+) and minus (-) signs allows you to open and close branches of the story.

Create a New Story Using the Decision Tree

A good way to use the What-If Builder in the classroom is to create a story using a three-step story-building  process.

Step One: Your Scenario

A Decision Tree helps you set up and see the branches of a story. Think of a story that is relevant to your course and the level of your students. You might want to sketch out a rough Decision Tree for your content before opening the software. Don’t get too ambitious. If you give students three options three times, you will generate 27 different endings. That is more than enough to get started.

Once you have decided on a Decision Tree and have some idea about the content at each step, launch the What-If Builder.

To create a new scenario:

1. Select New from the File menu.
2. Click New Choice.
3. Fill in the name of your first choice where it says “Title” and click the “Go->” button.
4. Continue using the New Choice and Go buttons to create a nested tree of choices.
5. To go back and add a second level of choices, use the  “<-Go Back” button. Look in the Decision Tree window to watch it grow.
6. Use the Decision Tree’s Edit menu to cut, copy, and paste entries.
7. Save your Decision Tree using the Save or Save As command from the File menu.
8. When you are ready to run your Decision Tree, select Run Mode from the Tools menu.

In the Edit Mode, you can view the Decision Tree for the Fish Story scenario (Figure 1). (This scenario is in the Sample Stories folder.) You can see that the first entry, “Use more nets,” gives the user two choices, the first of which is “Use nets with smaller holes.”

Step Two: Editing a Scenario

For many students, it may be too much to jump all the way to creating their own scenario, so editing the Fish Story (Figure 2) or one of your scenarios might be a good intermediate step. When making your scenario, you might leave some steps blank, or purposely say something that is incorrect. Challenge students to fill in the blank steps or find and correct your error.

A second activity might be to ask students to add several new choices to your scenario, or an entire “limb,” consisting of a new choice that leads to additional choices. You can evaluate students on the thoughtfulness of their additions.

Step Three: Creating a Student Scenario

This is where students create their own scenario. The goal of this activity is to deepen student thinking about a situation, so don’t rush to the computers. Plan ample class time for reflection. If students rename the file, appending their initials, the stories can be saved and sent to you as email for review. (One aid to thinking about situations with feedback can be causal loop diagrams. Intel makes a helpful tool for this available online, called Seeing Reason.)

Every decision has a consequence. Making a Decision Tree using the What-If Builder is a great way for students to experience this firsthand.