Internal Assessment

During the second year of the IB Biology HL class,  students are tasked with the research, design, performance, and write up their own investigation.  This project is known as an internal assessment (IA).  Students will spend 10 hours doing this investigation which will provide 20% of the overall assessment for the IB biology score (the IB score, not the class grade).

There is a large variety and range of possible investigations; each student must complete an investigation that is unique and adequately different from those of other students in the course.  Students can choose from:

• Traditional hands-on experimental work, if necessary following strict ethical guidelines for both human and animal subjects
• Database investigations in which students use a database to obtain data to process and analyse the information for the investigation.
• Computer simulations in which students process and present the data in such a way that something new is revealed.

The Internal Assessment is assessed (that means ‘graded’) using very strict IB criteria.  All IB science teachers world-wide must use the same criteria and apply them in the same way—quite a challenge!!  To ensure that everyone is following the rules and applying the criteria correctly, schools must send samples of graded student lab reports to IB for monitoring.  If a teacher is being too hard or too soft, that teacher’s marks which were awarded to students will be adjusted accordingly. 

The IB Biology Internal Assessment is graded using five IB Internal Assessment Criteria.  A maximum score of 24 points* is possible, awarded for the following five criteria:  

• Personal Engagement (up to 2 points)
• Exploration (up to 6 points)
• Analysis (up to 6 points)
• Evaluation (up to 6 points)
• Communication (up to 4 points)

*The points for the I.A. criteria are IB marks, not class grade book points.   

You can view the scoring rubric to read the levels of performance and indicators per level. The IB assessment models use mark-bands and advises teachers to use a "best-fit" approach in deciding the appropriate mark for a particular criterion. You can view annotated samples of Internal Assessments here.  

At SHS, the students complete the Internal Assessment during the first semester of the second year of IB Biology. The IA project is is broken into discrete "chunks" so that students are not overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project and so that there is ample time for asking questions, getting feedback and completing the experiments.  Under no circumstances should a student be procrastinating on this project or surprised by an upcoming deadline.  Here's the timeline for the 2020-2021 school year with links to the documents used in our class to help development of the final paper.  

Date	Task
​Week of September 7, 2020	​Intro to the Internal Assessment Problem question selection
​Week of September 14, 2020	Proposed problem question due  first come, first serve – since students can’t have the same problem question as others
​​Week of September 21, 2020	Teacher approval for problem question Intro to background research task
​​​Week of September 28, 2020	Background research due Intro to methodology proposal
Week of October 05, 2020	Methodology proposals due
​Week of October 12, 2020	Teacher approval of methodology Intro to data collection expectations Data collection plan due
Week of November 09, 2020	Review common feedback related to data collection Formatted raw data and data collection photos due Review requirements for 50% draft
Week of November 16, 2020	Review common feedback related to introduction and methods 50% draft due Intro to descriptive data analysis
​Week of November 23, 2020	Review common feedback related to data analysis Descriptive data analysis due Intro to data presentation
​Week of November 30, 2020	Review common feedback related to data presentation Data presentation draft due Intro to inferential data analysis
​​Week of December 7, 2020	Review common feedback related to inferential analysis Inferential analysis due ​Intro to conclusion and evaluation
​​​Week of December 14, 2020	Review common feedback related to the conclusion and evaluation Conclusion and evaluation draft due Compiling the final paper Review IA scoring rubric Peer and  parent evaluation of strengths and improvements​
​​​Week of January 4, 2021	​Self assessment against the IB rubric due​​ Peer and parent evaluations due
​​​​Week of January 11, 2021	​Final paper submission ​Declaration

A note to teachers and students about the IA:
Everything above is scored for completion, roughly 5-10 class lab points per task.  Something small like writing a problem question is worth 5 points, something bigger like the draft of the introduction would be worth 10 points.   The teacher will read and approve every problem question - once it is approved it is added to the list (which everyone can see) and if it's not approved (because it's too simple, too complex, not ethical, or lame...) then the student will be asked to try again.  A student cannot move on to the next step in the process until they complete the previous step.  Once a problem question has been approved, a student can't change it without discussion with the teacher.  

Common feedback is shared with all students but I, as the teacher, actually only spot check the details of a few of the students work.  For example, if I get 120 draft introductions turned in, I will randomly read 10 in detail - and anonymously share the feedback from those 10 with all 120 students.  Then, for the next section I will repeat with another (different) random 10 students.  I do this because there is absolutely NO WAY to read 120 students "in process" IA work.  Additionally, the IA is an ASSESSMENT and so per IB guidelines I can't be providing specific feedback to individual students.  Students can absolutely talk to me, ask questions, get help.... but it has to be on their initiative not mine. ​​