Before giving feedback on a first draft of an Extended essay  the supervisor will want to refer to the EE Assessment Criteria and the subject specific guidance provided in the Extended essay website (first exams 2018).

The Extended essay examiners' report 2018 is also a valuable document containing advice for the support of students. This is the latest edition, the report is not published every year.

This page gives some useful pointers for teachers reviewing a first draft of a Biology Extended essay.  It is not a comprehensive checklist for marking, but a clear guide to help teachers to support their students.

Giving feedback on the draft extended essay

The IB allows the supervisor to provide feedback once on the complete draft. Individual sections can be given to the supervisor throughout the process to ensure authenticity of the work as well as guidance on the specific areas. Once the entire essay is compiled into the full draft, supervisors must not edit the student’s work and may not provide comments about the essay after providing the feedback. This is to avoid too much help from the supervisors in the production of the essay. Supervisors must be alert to significant changes in style and language of the essay after the draft version as some students may seek outside assistance to “polish up” the writing. This constitutes malpractice even if this is difficult to truly establish.

Supervisors are encouraged to address each criterion in the feedback along with general guidance to support the student in improving the essay. Detailed or specific suggestions of phrasing, or actual corrections of errors should be avoided. 

Some supervisors write annotations onto the students work, other make brief notes and expand on them in a meeting. At this point student can add their own notes in a personal action plan.

It is very worthwhile spending some time discussing the feedback with the student.  There is nothing worse than a student taking the feedback away and not acting upon it. This discussion gives the student the opportunity to question any advice which they don't fully understand and to explain their approach if the supervisor has misunderstood something.

Questions to ask students once they have seen or heard your feedback:

a. Do you understand the feedback on each of the assessment criteria?

b. Which parts of the feedback are the least clear to you?

c. Can you outline the improvements you will make to your essay based on this feedback?

c. Are there any other materials which you will need to complete the essay?

d. What is your timeline to complete each of the steps?

e. Do you think you will have any problems with this timeline, or with the final deadline?

The following section list some suggestions of the kinds of questions a supervisor may like to use.

Pre-A: Choice of the subject and it's treatment using biological conventions

The choice of subject is important because there are heavy penalties for essays which are not grounded in the chosen subject.  Before giving detailed feedback it is worth checking that the essay is presented appropriately for Biology assessment. It may be possible to change the subject of entry or remove / replace parts of the work which will not help the assessment of a biological essay.

• Is the subject of the essay clearly Biology?
• Has the essay been written in the same language as the reflections on the form RPPF?
• Does any part of the essay stray too far into another subject, e.g. psychology, chemistry, geography.   Of course there are overlaps in some areas, e.g. nervous system, biochemistry and ecology but the assessment will be made from a Biology perspective. Any analysis, e.g. calculations of molecular masses, from Chemistry, will not give credit for analysis or understanding in Biology. However it would be valid to analyse the toxicity of molecules with different molecular masses on algae in Biology.
• Has the research question been analysed in a biological way? Usually this will involve research of hypotheses, collection of data, analysis of data, identification of trends.
• Have the ethical guidelines of the IB Animal Experimentation policy been followed and mentioned in the essay.

A: Focus and method

Research Question and focus through the essay

The RQ sets the path for the entire essay so it is best to know

• Does the research questions mention specific independent and dependent variables?
• Is the scope of the research question appropriate for a study of 40 hours?
• Has the title on the title page been used to help put the research question into the context of the broader topic?
• Is there enough justification for the choice of topic?
• Does the introduction connect background biological knowledge to the research question?
• Are all the sources used in the introduction related to explaining the context of the research question?
• Has the student made it clear how the parts of the introduction relate to the argument of the essay?
• Does the data analysis address the same variables as the research question?
• Is the RQn mentioned in the discussion / conclusion?
• Could the essay focus be improved if the student refined the research question a little?
• Are any parts of the essay unused or only superficially relevant?

Methodology

• Have sources of information been carefully chosen for good biological reasons?
• Has the student explained how the selected sources were chosen?
• Is there any mention that sources have been left out of the study with reasons given?
• Is there evidence of planning of the experiment, or data collection?
• Was their any trialling of the experiment method?
• Is the method appropriate:
  • will the results help to answer the research question?
  • are factors controlled sufficiently to achieve meaningful results?
  • is there sufficient data collected?

B: Knowledge and understanding

• Have the resources selected been used in support of the students thinking, or simply quoted?
• Is there any duplication of information in the introduction, or any missing pieces of supporting evidence?
• Have a range of different sources been used?
• How much of the biological information could be described as 'general ideas' and how much is specifically tailored to justify a hypothesis or a practical method?
• Does the use of biological conventions, scientific nomenclature and specific terminology show good subject knowledge?
• Are there any connections with broader concepts or ideas linking other aspects of biology or other knowledge?

C: Critical thinking

• How much has the research question been linked to the outcomes of data analysis?
• Has the evidence been used to consider more than one perspective, or hypothesis?
• Has the analysis of data from any experiments helped to resolve the research question?
• Have the secondary sources, text references, etc. been used with consideration of their value and reliability?
• Is there any data in the analysis which has not contributed to the discussions of the conclusion? Why has is not been used?
• To what extent is there an effective line of argument from the research question to the conclusions?
• Has the data been used to make reasoned deductions about the research question?
• How much evaluation of the results, data collection or the analysis is there?
• Is there any attempt to estimate the significance of any limitations in the methods or analysis? Using statistics perhaps?
• Is there a critical appraisal of the quality of academic sources, books, website references?
• Is there any mention of unanswered questions, new problems or unexpected findings?
• Have the findings been compared to any other academic findings?

D: Presentation

Formal presentation requirements

• Less than 4000 words.
• Font size 12.
• Double line spacing.
• Title page with Title, research question, subject, word count, unique personal identifier.
• Contents table.
• Correctly numbered pages.
• Section heading appropriate to Biology.
• Images, tables and graphs correctly numbered and have a title.

Supervisors must ensure that the student knows how to properly cite sources and provide accurate references.
The IB does not prescribe any specific citation method but students must be consistent in their chosen system.

• Are there citations for all sources, ideas, images, data, quotes?
• Is there an entry in the bibliography for each citation?
• Are there any unused entries in the bibliography?
• Has 'data accessed' be stated for web resources?
• If there are appendices, should any of this material be incorporated into the essay text?

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Authentication of the students work

While giving feedback on a draft it is a good opportunity to reflect on the authentification of the student's work. The essay must be the work of the student. Citations and references should be given for the words, data, graphics and ideas of others. If too much of the essay is taken from one specific source this can also cause problems, students are not expected to repeat the work of another researcher, they are supposed to create their own research.

The supervisor must be alert to issues of ghost writing, collusion, plagiarism or other sorts of malpractice. Most schools use a plagiarism checking service, like Turnitin.  A supervisor should also be alert to sudden changes in writing style, where there has been help writing the essay from another person?  Sometimes what can seem like malpractice can be explained as students might have unwittingly copied and pasted parts of text into their introduction without knowing how to correctly cite references at the start of the process.  Of course with good supervision this shouldn't happen but not always do students listen to the careful advice they are given!

The supervisor should alert their IB Diploma Coordinator and school administration in the case of suspicions. Any essay for which the supervisor cannot sign the cover sheet should not be submitted to the IBO, following the guidance provided in the Handbook of procedures.

Predicted grade

The predicted grade will be expected from the supervisor.  This is used to assist the IB verify the examining process. Supervisors should be as accurate as possible considering each criteria carefully and when reading and giving feedback on a first draft this is a good time to make a first estimate of the predicted grade. Assessment criteria can be found on MyIB Extended essay website.
You may prefer to use the Extended essay grade descriptors, although these are less detailed.

Grade boundaries are usually the same every year: Up to 6 = E, 7-13 = D, 14-20 = C, 21-26 = B, 27 or above = A.

Schools should establish their own policy about the sharing of predicted grades with students. There are arguments for and against this and schools need to make this clear to supervisors and students.

Once the results are released in July for the May session (January for the November session), supervisors should consider the final mark relative to their predicted assessment. Ask your IB Diploma Coordinator for the results. If you feel that there is a discrepancy you may request an Enquiry upon Results (EUR 1) through the IB Diploma Coordinator at your school. The student must give his or her consent for such a query as the mark may go up, remain the same or go down.