Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in Science with sInvestigator

Download and Setup sInvestigator

To install sInvestigator on your computer, follow the instructions corresponding to your operating system. Please read the license agreement. In downloading sInvestigator, you are agreeing to its Terms and Conditions. A copy of this license is also included in the distribution folder.

sInvestigator Setup on Windows Computers

sInvestigator-v2020.09w has the following recommended configuration:
  • Intel Core 2 processor (2.66GHz)
  • 8GB RAM
  • 150MB available on hard disk (more space is required if Java is not installed)
  • 15" or larger monitor with a screen resolution of 1920x1200
  • Microsoft Windows 10
  • Java 14 or later (download address: https://adoptopenjdk.net).
    After downloading the most recent Java distribution file from the link above, double-click it and follow the displayed installation instructions.
Click here to download sInvestigator for Windows. Unzip the distribution file (sInvestigator-v2020.09w.zip) in the desired location (for example in your home folder 'C:\Users\'). You are now ready to use sInvestigator by double-clicking the file sInvestigator.bat in the distribution folder (sInvestigator-v2020.09w).

sInvestigator Setup on macOS Computers

sInvestigator-v2020.09m has the following recommended configuration:
  • MacBook Pro or iMac 2015 or later
  • 8GB RAM
  • 150MB available on hard disk (more space is required if Java is not installed)
  • 15" or larger monitor with a screen resolution of at least 1920x1200
  • macOS Catalina or later
  • Java 14 or later (download address: https://jdk.java.net/14/).
    After downloading the most recent Java distribution file from the link above, double-click it to extract the Java distribution folder, then move the extracted folder to /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/.
Click here to download sInvestigator for Mac.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED: Unzip the distribution file (sInvestigator-v2020.09m.zip) in your home folder (/Users//sInvestigator-v2020.09m.zip; for example /Users/JohnSmith/sInvestigator-v2020.09m).

If you chose to unzip the distribution file in a different location, you must edit the second line in the 'sInvestigator.command' file to point to the actual location, relative to your home folder (for example, if you unzipped the distribution file on the desktop, you must change the second line to 'cd Desktop/sInvestigator-v2020.09m'). You are now ready to use sInvestigator by double-clicking the file sInvestigator.command in the distribution folder (sInvestigator-v2020.09m). If you obtain a security error and are unable to open the program with double click, then perform the following operations:
  1. Open a Finder window in your home folder
  2. Navigate to the folder 'sInvestigator-v2020.09m' and select it
  3. CONTROL-CLICK on the sInvestigator.command file
  4. Select the Open command
  5. Override the security message and select to Open the program

Cogent Data

sInvestigator is based on the Cogent cognitive assistant. It stores analyses in your home folder inside the folder structure 'CogentData/sInvestigator/repository'. When you run sInvestigator for the first time, it creates this folder structure in your home folder. If you download and use future versions of sInvestigator, please DO NOT delete "CogentData" because the already existing analyses from this folder will be used by the new versions of sInvestigator.

Uninstall sInvestigator

To uninstall sInvestigator-v2020.09:
  • Delete the distribution folder ('sInvestigator-v2020.09w' on Windows or 'sInvestigator-v2020.09m' on macOS)
  • If you plan to install a new version of sInvestigator, skip this step; otherwise, if you plan to no longer use sInvestigator, delete the data folder from your home folder (CogentData). When you delete the data folder, all the analyses developed with sInvestigator will be lost. Make a copy of the 'CogentData\sInvestigator\repository' folder if you need to preserve this data.