The Process
Your journey begins here. Follow these steps to get you started on an important component of your diploma.
1. Think Carefully about the subjects you enjoy the most and those that you typically do well in. These are not always the same so speak to your teachers and coordinators to help you decide.
2. Don't jump in blind-Read the following materials: the assessment criteria, relevant subject-specific sections of the Extended Essay guide, the IB's ethical guidelines and other associated policies where relevant, such as those relating to animal experiments. Pay attention to the type of research that is required in that subject and decide if that suites your abilities and interests.
3. On Managebac you will find a tab called the Researcher's Reflective Space (RRS). You can use this as the key planning and reflection tool for the extended essay process where you keep resources etc. that you can keep in one place and easily go back to
4. Choose a topic and undertake some background reading in it.
5. Formulate a preliminary research question. Try to incorporate an IB command term in the research question if possible.
6. It is important to develop a plan for writing your essay. Plan your time from now until the final submission date by setting yourself small targets to accomplish and a date or time in which to do it.
7. Identify the type of data that you need to collect and how you are going to do it. Make sure to check your subject specific guidance.
8. Make sure you know what referencing methods you will use and ensure that they meet IB requirements. Remember to keep a constant record of your sources in your RRS.
9. Set deadlines for yourself that are realistic and take into consideration VSA's timeline which you can find in the VSA EE Guide
10. Plan a structure for the essay. This may change as the research develops but it is useful to have a sense of direction from the start.
11. Begin conducting some reading about your topic. Vary your sources. The focus of this step should be to assess the viability of your RQ and your plan. If you discover that you don't have time to collect the information in the time you have to complete your EE then you need to change your research question. Go back to step 3, 2, or 1, and choose a new research question that can be answered.
12. It's now time to conduct your research. Any and all material collected must be put together in a logical order, linked to the structure of the essay and clearly focused on the research question posed. Only then will you know that you have enough evidence for each stage of the argument so that you can proceed to the next. Things will go wrong at some stage of this process, be prepared for this. Sometimes you may discover something later in the research that undermines what you thought had been established earlier. If that happens, your research plan needs to be revised.