What is the Group 4 Project?

The opening slide of a presentation on their Group 4 Project by students from the TED Ankara School, Turkey (thanks to their teacher, Mustafa Mustunisik, for giving me permission to use the image)

So what is the Group 4 Project? It was devised to cover one of the ten aims of the course which states, “Develop an understanding of the relationships between scientific disciplines and their influence on other areas of knowledge”. Apart from the Group 4 Project everything else you do towards your assessment must be on an individual basis. Even if you work in pairs when you do your practical work for the IA, the collection of data and the write-up of the report must be your own work – if it isn’t, you are guilty of collusion or dishonesty with all the consequences that follow. 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 some of the other aims of the chemistry syllabus which are concerned with global citizenship, ethical issues and 21st century communication skills. The ten hour project is basically broken down into three phases. A planning stage, an action phase and evaluation phase. In the early years of the project all the IB students in a school were put together and told to try to come up with a common theme to which the chemists, physicists and biologists (and design technologists and those studying environmental systems) could all contribute to. Having decided what to do the chemists would then do their chemistry and contribute to the final result along with the other science disciplines.

Not necessarily subject based

Now chemistry students do not have to do chemistry for the Group 4 Project. You may if you wish, but it is not compulsory. The choice of topic must be scientific or technological. It must be collaborative and should also involve ICT and include ethical and global citizen implications. It should also have an international dimension. This can be achieved in several ways, such as working online with students from schools from other regions of the world or choosing a topic with global issues.

Practical or theoretical?

In the past most students actually carried out practical work in their own subject for the ‘Action phase’. In chemistry this would often involve some sort of water analysis for example. However, in a school laboratory and with limited time available it was difficult to do any real meaningful analysis. Much better was to ring up the water board and get a print out of the last analysis done by them which showed the concentration a huge range of substances dissolved in the water including heavy metal ions, pesticides and insecticides etc. Now this is recognised and the use of spreadsheet etc. is encouraged and the data does not have to be generated first hand by you – although you can still do this if you wish.

Students doing two (or more) science subjects

If you are studying two of the Group 4 science subjects (including computer science, design technology and sports, exercise and health science) you only need to do the Group 4 Project once. This also applies to those few schools where a few students study three science subjects (in order to gain entrance to medical schools).