Introduction to the prescribed practicals and skills for the PSOW

Practical skills will be essential for the assessed individual investigation. This investigation is the "Internal Assessment" and one single piece of work will have a weighting of 20% of the final marks. There are no other assessed pieces of practical work.

The great strength of being able to design your own programme, most of which does not have to be assessed, is that practical work can be fully integrated into good biology teaching. The new PSOW allows the teacher to choose the most suitable experiments for their students. There are no specified protocols to use and teachers are encouraged to allow students to design their own investigations through an inquiry-based approach. Students will not become Rosalind Franklyn or Louis Pasteur over-night. The PSOW will need to introduce practical skills step by step. There are a wide range of practical skills identified in the guide under "skills" and there are lots of examples on this website.

It would be wise to cover as many of these experiments as possible too. Together this makes quite a full practical scheme of work

Seven prescribed experiments

There are seven experiments which are prescribed by the DP Biology guide. An understanding of these experiments will be assessed in the first section of paper 3. Students will need to have hands on experience of these experiments in particular. The guide does not specify exactly how these should be carried out and there is plenty of opportunity to tailor these experiments to the needs of the students, the type of learning which is taking place or the resources available in the lab.

Fifty-five practical skills or applications mentioned in the new guide

The section entitled "Applications and skills" makes reference to a large number of biological practical skills. There is no obligation to include any specific experiment but any of the skills may be assessed in the new section A of paper three so students will need to have some experience. It is left for the teacher to choose exactly how to do this and demonstrations, data analysis exercises or simulations could be used where individual practical work is not suitable.

An Independent Investigation which forms the "Internal Assessment"

The Group 4 Project

Apart from the Group 4 Project everything else a student does towards their assessment must be individual. This goes against how science works in reality where teams of scientists from different disciplines often work together to solve a common problem. This is what the Group 4 Project tries to imitate. It is a collaborative activity whereby students studying different science subjects come together to work on a scientific or technological problem. It should also address Aims 7 and 8 which are concerned with global citizenship, ethical issues and 21st century communication skills. The new 2014 guide stipulates that a reflective statement written by each student on their involvement in the Group 4 Project must be included on the cover sheet of their internally assessed Investigation. There is no other assessment of the project.

Other Practical work or field work

There are many other opportunities for practical work during an IB biology course and they can all contribute to the PSOW.

Details of the seven prescribed experiments and the practical skills - as a pdf sheet and in  Word format