The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme is best known for its tough standards that test the holistic development of a student. Surfing through the programme without any assistance may leave you standing in the middle of the road without any map to guide your way further. The arm and leg of the program are the IB Internal Assessments (IA). The IA is different from a structured examination. It gives the student the liberty to pick a topic of their choice, conduct independent research, and then present the outcomes. While the choice of topic is liberating, it is also a hard nut to crack. Research is not just about some standard knowledge you can acquire and base your examination on. Research would require you to put your heart into the project, study the intricacies of it, and then present your paper.
Before forming a success story of IB-IA in front of you, let’s first dive a little deeper into the ocean of doubts to clarify what IB-IA is and what it stands for.
The chief objective of IA is to check your understanding of the concocted scenarios, the interrelationships between different areas of research, and finally, your own acumen to carry out independent research.
As the main motto of IB is imparting education that not only tests the kids on a surface level by putting up standardized questions related to the concept but also develops world leaders who can take the world by storm, the idea is to create people with strong ethics and values who can undertake the responsibility of being holistic in their approach. The examination that is based on subjective knowledge of the concepts can only partially assess a student’s potential. The IA, or Internal Assessment, steps in to grade a student on their intrinsic abilities to prepare a research paper.
Here’s a reference to what weightage is generally given to IA in different subjects:
It is about 20–30% in the SL subjects. Around 20–40% of your HL and EE contribute to a 15% weightage in your diploma grades. Having said that, it becomes almost indisputable that one needs to put in a lot of effort in IA that will ultimately have an emphasis on the final score.
So, let’s touch the waters of how you as a student can do IA effectively:
- What the heck is IB-IA?
IA is the internal assessment undertaken by every student apart from the structured examination in the core six subjects. IA is both a liberating and a challenging part of the diploma programme. It accounts for around 20–40% of the grade. Liberating in the sense that the student is free to pick a research topic of their own, but hard in the amount of effort required to prepare an independent research work. The assessment criteria are different depending on the subject, but a good general assessment would rate you for your knowledge and understanding, usage of language, choice of topic, engagement, and relevance to the subject field.
- Your IA topic is the decider:
Students make a mistake in this part by either choosing a topic that is too hard or a topic that, on the surface, is easy but is of no interest to them. Remember, you have to conduct authentic research on your topic. If you have no interest in the topic, no amount of effort can shape it into a well-rounded research paper. You must be careful enough to pick a topic of genuine interest to you. If the subject only interests you, your research will be thorough, and you can engage the reader.Now, the question arises: how can one pick the right topic? For this, you need to put a little energy into understanding your interests and then decide what really matters to your heart. For example, if you are enthusiastic about geography, you can further study the subject to find out an area where you can hypothetically conduct research. Suppose you have a soft spot for knowing various species of animals. You can dive into the research and make a project out of it. - Dissect the research to perfection:
Organising your research is very important, as one can’t really do good research unless it is organised. Develop the subject of the thesis first and get hands-on with the resources required to conduct it. Make sure that you have all the resources handy to support your research. Your research outcome is your goal, and your research work is your process. So, your goal must be in your head while planning out your process. Design your strategy in such a way that the achievement of your goal becomes easy. You can prepare steps to be followed. For example, suppose your research is based on an understanding of wildlife diversity. In that case, you need to decide on a focus area and then gather all the relevant information related to that. After that, you can carefully examine which information is of use and which is simply redundant to minimise analysing everything. - Online tools and software are your heaven:
The era of everything on computers has made research even more powerful. You can use Excel sheets, pivot tables, graphs, and charts to present your research clearly and colourfully. This not only catches the eye of the reader but also makes the research interesting to follow. Many online tools help give shape to good online research. The software related to data presentation helps enhance the quality of effective research.
Short animations to convey a potential point can be of immense use for the reader to ascertain the point. - Plagiarism check one hundred percent:
As always, one’s research is not entirely based on the data collected and investigated by you alone. You also rely on publicly available data. It becomes essential to cite the authors of the data to avoid any future plagiarism. The plagiarism check helps maintain the source data’s accuracy, and your grades are also not affected.
Further, proper review and proper timelines will help you ace your IB-IA. Exploit the pool of online resources as much as you can to achieve a good score.
