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1) Equipment Available 2) IA Assessment Criteria 

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1) Equipment Available 2) IA Assessment Criteria 

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1) Students need to be aware of the software, sensors and other equipment that have at their disposal and how to use them to collect data. It would be useful to create slideshow of the equipment/practicals they can use to collect data

2) Students need to be versed on the IA criteria used to assess their IA. I think every lab we do should be presented with certain IA assessment criteria so that they can put more value on those skills.

-Soroush Khoshroo

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As many of you have already covered the big important skills, I will highlight 2 which have been key in the success (or not) of my students' IAs.

1. Managing data

The students need to be shown how much data and of what type is needed to support different RQs, but once the data has been collected, my students usually lack the skills in spreadsheets, charts, formulae et., which are needed to organise and evaluate it.

2. Statistical analysis.

I know that a formal stats test is not always essential for the ESS IA, but as I come from Biology, I am used to training the students to gather data always with the aim to conduct a stats test. For example, If they are looking to investigate the effect of a changing variable, then they will need at least 6 different treatments with at least 5 repeats, to calculate standard deviations and apply a Spearman's Rank correlation. If they are looking to compare groups of data, then they need large amounts of data to show normal distribution and be able to apply a test such as a student t test.

These skills need to be taught explicitly well before the IA comes up.

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There are a variety of skills necessary for students to be successful on their IAs.

1.  Experimental Design.  From my experience, students lack the ability to create repeatable methodologies for answering their research questions.  From field work to describing how they'll use secondary data to answer a research question, students want to just be given a procedure that works.  Students often struggle with determining the appropriate statistical analysis tool to answer their research questions as well.  Having labs and field work in which students must design the procedure and the method behind analysis is important in the PSOW.

2.  Lab and field techniques.  This is hopefully a short-term issue with our school, but during the pandemic, we were remote learning for a year and a half.  Students missed out on important years of training how to conduct lab work.  Measuring, how to use lab equipment, collecting data, being accurate and not just precise, and other basic lab skills have been lost on some students.  This translates to poor data collection when it comes time to work on IAs.  I believe it is necessary to build these foundational lab skills in the curriculum from early in the program.  Including the development of these skills in the PSOW is important.

-Mark Danielson

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I am seeing a mix of very specific skills being suggested that are related to sub-topics in the syllabus and more general skills that apply to research and writing that aren't inherently unique to ESS.

In general, I would say the skills associated with time management are very important for our IB students. An issue my colleagues and I are having with our school's first DP cohort now in grade 12 is missing deadlines. We intentionally staggered start dates and submission dates across subjects for the IAs but many students are failing to complete their work on time and as they keep missing deadlines, more work is being added as we continue through the semester which is a source of stress for the students and frustration for the teachers.

A specific skill related to the syllabus is to be able to design a model or simulation.

Luke

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Researching valid sources & Data process (Excel work) 

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Researching valid sources & Data process (Excel work) 

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I would think both of these skills are essential for ALL Group 4 IAs.

Firstly, I find that students are finding unreliable sources for majority of their research. Yes, Google can be a starting point but majority of students will purely use Google as the end game, which is TERRIBLE practice.

Firstly, I would suggest starting with activities that show students a variety of different sources on a particular topic. From there, we will analyze to see the strength and limitations of the source (Titles, Authors, Dates, Publications, Reference). I think majority of the time a great indicator is an Author and reference list at the end of the paper or article. If this is lacking, often time I would not recommend using this towards an IA. However! If the purpose of the source is to initial interest or a problem, this might be OK. But there should be only max. 2 references like this.

Second part of the activity is to ask for students to extract key terms and search for more valid sources, scientific publications, online journals, etc.

Second skill that is most important which we probably don't teach explicit at much in G11 and G12 is Excel skills. Yes, we will teach them a bit but for the most part, this is a tool that should have been taught in G9 and G10. Now that being ask, there are a number of online tutorial that can get them up to speed if they are behind. The basic of graphing, graphing choices, IV, DV and most importantly trend lines. I think ESS is a bit tricky as there are often times that a peak is reached. This means that it may not fit the simple linear trendline. If this is the case, the use of R2 might not be useful in determining how close the data is to the trendline. While mathematical expression is NOT necessary in ESS, this is a skill that is useful to have if the student does have calculation work which can be done on Excel or excel like software.
(Kenny)

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Students should develop skills in accessing reliable secondary data, and evaluate this for both relevance to their question and academic rigor. Students need to be given opportunities throughout the course to read and discuss peer reviewed, published scientific studies.

Related to this, students should be guided towards high quality scientific writing of their own which is coherent, explicit, concise and which skillfully embeds secondary sources with correct formatting for in-text citations and referencing. (Mike)

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Research and Questionnaire Survey Design + observation

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Research and Questionnaire Survey Design + observation

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One important element I feel students need is to conduct the correct research to aid in their setting of the 'IA Context'.  They need to understand this is constantly changing as well over the course of they IA.

Another important skill - this is coming from my first cohort that has a large number more interested in conducting socio-economic surveys and not actual hard science field work - is questionnaire survey development.  Students need to know the different between a simple 'opinion' survey to a more robust 'habits / behaviour' survey.  That is to say their questions need to be designed to have interviewees / those that fill it in with details of their daily behaviour that relates back to EVS and sustainability.

Observations skills - Students should be open to the idea that simple environmental observations are also useful for specific fieldwork. They can incorporate counting and use photographic evidence to identify changes (Mark)

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ESS Students should be able to use a quadrat to complete ecological studies that involve percentage cover, population density, and compare plant diversity. (Sarah)

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ESS Students should be able to create a proper data table that allows for data analysis and the creation of graphs. (Jake)