Top Tips to Ace your IBDP Biology IA
Biology Internal Assessment is a key component of your final IBDP grades. Whether you are an HL or an SL student, it accounts for 20% of your overall grade.
Hence, Blen is thriving hard to make sure you get the best possible grades in this important part of your IB. Our team of IB Experts and Examiners have collaboratively worked on compiling some important aspects to keep in mind while you draft your Biology IA! These aspects are based on the criteria that will be used to evaluate you.
Aspect #1: Personal Engagement | Weightage: 8%
The IA must be relevant to your daily life. An experiment that has no relevance to your life or in which you fail to demonstrate how the findings can affect your life will be automatically degraded. Making ensuring the study question is relevant to local issues is one approach to do this.
Creating a one-of-a-kind experiment and research question. Sure, you can choose a topic from a list of Biology IA themes, but if you don't then modify it to make it unique to you, you'll lose points for personal engagement!
Aspect #2: Exploration | Weightage: 25%
A good research question is necessary for a good IB grade. Here are a few pointers: Your research question should:
- Be self-explanatory
- Don't be overly complicated to decipher
- Create a dependent variable.
- Create an independent variable.
Your variables (independent, dependent, and controlled) must be clearly stated, along with a brief description of how each will be measured, in addition to your research question.
Establish a hypothesis that is based on the projected link between your variables and is backed by scientific thought.
Aspect #3: Collecting Data and Analysis | Weightage: 25%
There is the significance of the number 25, it is the minimum of samples required for your exploration. It means a minimum of 5 trials for each of the 5 independent variable values you've chosen.
Showcasing your calculations (at least one as an example) is necessary. In order to interpret the results if graphs or diagrams are essential, don’t hesitate to draw them clearly.
Aspect #4: Conclusion and Evaluation | Weightage: 25%
While writing your conclusion, it is of utmost importance to refer back to your research question and the original hypothesis. Was your hypothesis correct? Did you address the research question? What you could have done differently? What could be the source of any disparities?
Evaluation is another imperative part of your exploration. This gives you the opportunity to brainstorm about the limitations and potential weaknesses in the methodology you’ve chosen. We believe that you include what you would modify if you were to repeat the experiment in order to obtain more precise or accurate data.
Aspect #5: Communication and Format | Weightage: 17%
Don’t ignore the basic rules of essay writing, let it be as simple stuff as superscript, subscript or it is a well-structured, well-cited piece of article.
Often ignore but critical is the in-text citation in MLA format and bibliography to complete your IA.
Well, a final tip, make sure your IA reads like a flow but a collection of bits and pieces just randomly joined together.
Explore more about Internal Assessments on Blen.
