Lab Report Biology IA SL

[IBSE13]

So I've been wanting to do a data analysis for my Biology IA since I'm terrible at conducting labs. However, my teacher has - not surprisingly - not been of much help and keep insisting that I do a lab since no one has ever done a data analysis Bio IA at my school. The weird thing about this is that she explicitly told the entire class that she wished that someone would do one this year so that she would not have to set up lab time for every single student.

 

Because of this I have actually no clue of what I could possibly do, since she won't provide me with any examples of topics (like the ones for the lab experiments), nor any good websites apart from gapminder.

 

Can anyone help me out?

[ShootingStar16]

So I've been wanting to do a data analysis for my Biology IA since I'm terrible at conducting labs. However, my teacher has - not surprisingly - not been of much help and keep insisting that I do a lab since no one has ever done a data analysis Bio IA at my school. The weird thing about this is that she explicitly told the entire class that she wished that someone would do one this year so that she would not have to set up lab time for every single student.

 

Because of this I have actually no clue of what I could possibly do, since she won't provide me with any examples of topics (like the ones for the lab experiments), nor any good websites apart from gapminder.

 

Can anyone help me out?

If you're terrible with labs, you should definitely do a database (that's what I'm doing for both my chem and bio IA's). It's easier in some ways because you don't have to go through the hassle of getting materials. What's nice is that you get to play on your strengths for this new IA. 

 

Some good databases would be the WHO website and here is a whole list of biological databases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biological_databases

 

Hopefully, these will give you some inspiration. It is super hard coming up with a topic from scratch. I would know because this honestly caused me the most stress. However, don't stress over it too much. Don't rush yourself into thinking of a good topic overnight because that will really overwhelm you.

Are there any other bio teachers in your school who you can talk to? Ik for chem, my supervisor would not give us feedback on our proposals, so I just asked my own chem teacher for help.

 

For the IA: first off, I suggest identifying a general area of interest (what topic really interested you?). For bio database IA's, you usually look at the correlation between two things which can be rather easy. See what you can find in the topic that interests you. 

 

Hope I helped a bit and good luck!