Personal Investigation
Internal assessment accounts for 20% of the final assessment and this is assessed through a single individual investigation. This investigation may involve a hands-on approach, use of data-bases, modelling, simulation or a hybrid. Student work is internally assessed by the teacher and externally moderated by the IB.
What will an Investigation look like?
The internal assessment task will be one scientific investigation taking about 10 hours and the write- up should be about 6 to 12 pages long. Investigations exceeding this length will be penalized in the communication criterion as lacking in conciseness.
It should require a purposeful research question and the scientific rationale for it.
Possible tasks include:
It should require a purposeful research question and the scientific rationale for it.
Possible tasks include:
- a hands-on laboratory investigation
- using a spreadsheet for analysis and modelling
- extracting data from a database and analysing it graphically
- producing a hybrid of spreadsheet/database work with a traditional hands-on investigation
- using a simulation provided it is interactive and open-ended.
Some sources of help
The below websites are known to contain information ideas for research questions about methods that produce good results:
- Science And Plants for Schools has lots of botanical investigations and ideas
- Practical Biology brings together lots of different biology practicals for all ages of student
- Mr Rothery publishes a list of practicals commonly done to suport his A-level teaching
- Senior Biology (your workbook) has a list of investigation ideas for extended essays that are also suitable for individual investigations
- Vernier dataloggers can be used in individual investigations and vernier publishes ideas and details of how they can be used. (We have guides available in the prep room or you can go to the website)
Documents to help you
Documents |
Example investigation (annotated by examiners) |
Type and grade |
Hands on PE 2 Exp 5 An 5 Ev 5 Com 4 - 24 |
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Hands on |
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Hands on |
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Hands on |
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Hands on |
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Value |
Data base |
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Simulation |
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Value |
Simulation |
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Data base PE 2 Ex 4 An 6 Ev 3 Com 4 = 19 |
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Value |
Data base |