The Investigation

Rationale

Students are required to submit one investigation for internal assessment. It is hoped that the introduction of new assessment criteria using mark bands and a best-fit approach will make the assessment easier maintain rigour, whilst also allowing students creativity and vsome freedom to choose a topic of personal interest for their investigation..

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What does an Investigation look like?

Six to twelve pages of experiment report including diagrams, graphs and analysis, with a maximum of 3000 words.

Its complexity should be similar to the level of the topics in the IB course.

Students chose an individual research question.

The experimental method could be any of the following:

• practical lab experiment
• modelling activity using a spreadsheet
• analysis of data taken from a database
• a hybrid practical lab with analysis of secondary data
• an investigation using an open-ended simulation

All investigations will probably have the following sections to fulfil the assessment criteria:

Role of the teacher

It's not easy for students to carry out an investigation independently and the IB recognises this.  
Planning is an important teacher role.

The IB guide suggests that the practical scheme of work should introduce students to the skills required for the investigation as part of the course. There are many opportunities suggested in the guide.  However it is useful to allow a couple of weeks to introduce the investigation, and to provide time for students to decide their research topic and research question. There are some options for colaboration at this stage. 

Many school allocate three or four weeks to the Investigation.  Some schools prefer to collapse the timetable for a couple of days, or even work during a field trip to complete the investigation.

During the investigation period the teacher becomes a crucial resource for the students. Some students need guidance in focusing their research question, others need help to choose appropriate apparatus, or a suitable protocol from reference books. This is a busy time for the teacher. If a large class are individually investigating there is a dizzying array of tasks to do.

This is a summary of the "roles of the teacher" section of the IB Biology guide:

• Introducing the task, and its requirements.
• Helping students during planning - in the choice of appropriate tasks, and in writing focused research questions.
• Ensuring academic honesty in students' research during the exploration.
• Checking that students follow guidelines on safety during lab work.
• Guiding students in standard techniques, use of apparatus, or the correct disposal of solutions.
• Responding to student questions throughout the task.
• First draft feedback - to help students complete the task according to the assessment criteria.
• Checking authenticity - using Turnitin or another plagiarism detecting tool and by keeping track of each student's progression from proposal to first draft.
• Marking the work with annotations for the moderator.
• Submitting the work for moderation.

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Approximate timings for 10 hours of IA

The investigation is different from other lab work in the PSOW. It should account for 10 hours of work, but this can include introductions and write-ups as well as the actual practical lab work, if there is some. It is possible to complete an investigation using database data, or spreadsheet models. This is counted as data collection in the same way as practical work.

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