Lab Report How is your internal assessment grade calculated? Does the group 4 project affect anything?

[meh]

I'm in bio HL and I'm wondering about labs. I am getting the impression that not all of them get sent in to IB - does this mean that if I do really poorly on a few of them, it won't negatively affect my mark (unless my teacher, for some reason, sends it in)? If not all labs get used for my IB mark then how many does my teacher need to send in? Is it different for SL? I'm not very clear about this and I'm kind of worried that the bad labs I did at the beginning of last year are going to drag my mark down.

Also I'm a little puzzled because I hadn't heard of the group 4 project until this year. Is it a major component of IB? Does it affect your internal assessment mark?

As you can tell, I'm a little lost at the moment =[

[Sublime Sunshine]

I don't know about bio, but for chem hl its 76% exam, 24% internal assessment.

That 24% is determined by a mark out of 48. There are five assessment criteria:

Design (D)

Data collection and processing (DCP)

Conclusion and evaluation (CE)

Personal skills (PS)

Manipulative skills (MS)

Six marks are awarded for each criteria, Design, DCP and CE are assessed twice (ie out of 12).

Personal skills are evaluated through the group 4 project, essentially meaning that the project counts for 3% of your final mark.

Manipulative skills are assessed summatively over the course.

So that means over the entire course, for each criteria (D, DCP, CE) two different experiments will be assessed. This is the same for HL and SL.

Don't worry if you did a few bad labs at the start of the year, this shouldn't affect your final mark. My teacher so far has notified us which labs are being sent.

See this post for more information on how science IA's are assessed:

So my teacher tells me that the lab reports they've sent in each year were always marked down. So how do I ensure really high marks on a lab report?

If you want the really bad news then read on...

Firstly it probably doesn't depend on what you hand in personally. The moderation procedure assesses how your teacher has graded the practical work that is handed in for moderation. This is only a sample of the students work (not all students, not all work).

The sample is chosen from the predicted grades according to a very simple algorith. If you have a group of 10 students, then five students are chosen. The second from the best, the second from the worst, the one nearest the median and the two that are half way between the top chosen and the median and the bottom chosen and the median.

If you are the best (or the worst) in your group you won't be chosen, unless it is a very small group.

If the moderator feels that your teacher has applied the IA criteria incorrectly he/she will change the grades of ALL of your class (not just the moderated work).

The grade change seems to be applied proportionally. If, for example, the top mark awarded by your teacher is 44/48 and the moderator decides that it should only be 32/48, then he is downgrading by a percentage of 12/48 x 100 = 25%. This downgrade will then be applied proportionally over the whole class, so that a student who was awarded 12/48 will only receive 9/48.

The system is unfair, unjust and unethical. You personally could fulfill all of the criteria 100% and present the best series of practicals in the history of the IB and still get downgraded. It's that stupid!

To ensure that your teachers sample is not downgraded (although impossible) you must encourage the whole class to fulfill the criteria to the best of their ability and the teacher to be extremely harsh with the assessment and application of the criteria, students under no circumstances should attempt to persuade the teacher to be 'kind' with the marking.

The appropriate nature of all experimental work is essential. There must be no sign of collaboration between students in write-ups or any other aspect of the experiment. Work presented for moderation MUST be entirely individual, there must be no prescribed presentation (tables, graphs etc). If possible the work should be word processed and any background referenced. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.

There is a section about moderation on the www.ibchem.com website for more info (although I have covered the bulk of it here)

Edited October 7, 2010 by Sublime Sunshine

[Tilia]

Just to clarify, all sciences HL are marked the same way.

[jbird]

My Bio HL teacher says that 3 each (I think) of Design labs, DCPs, and CEs are sent off to IB. They don't necessarily have to be the same experiment; your design lab could be on oral bacteria and your data collection and processing on plant growth. Your teacher will pick your best ones, so messing up sometimes is OK.

I could be completely wrong, though, so I would get more info.

Anyway, how are manipulative skills scored? I haven't heard anything about that at my school. Does your teacher mark you randomly while you're doing a lab and not even tell you?

Thanks!

[Sublime Sunshine]

You're correct that they can be completely different experiments, BUT the 3 marks to each criterion is the model for 2008 exams. The new 2009 curriculum is in my other post. I'm not too sure how the manipulative skills criterion is marked at your school, you should ask your teacher, but here are some helpful links.

Assessment:

How science IA's are done (scroll down): http://ibchem.com/IB/ibass.htm

The criteria for IA's: http://ibchem.com/IB/ibe/criteria.htm

(In the criteria it shows how to do well in manipulative skills even though I don't know when it will be marked)

*This is a chemistry website but don't worry it is the same in all sciences.

[timtamboy63]

Our teacher says the Group 4 assignment is seperate, and we get it as a seperate mark on our report.

[Sublime Sunshine]

Do you mean for your final ib report?

But, I'm pretty sure that it is used to mark the personal skills (a) criterion according to that website. The idea is that when you're doing your project, you get marked on "working within a team", "recognising the contributions of others and exchanging" and "integrating ideas".

[ILM]

Mainly the IB choose only some random samples, in which they are mainly asses the teacher, if he corrected them rightly then you will take you mark that your teacher put, if the teacher was generous with the student and they found out from the samples that he is, then all the class will lose marks.

For Group 4 project IB only want proof that you have do it.

[Drake Glau]

This all counts for your group 4 area of the 6. Your IA is 18, manipulation skills is 6, group4 project is 6, and your exams are 18 also I think.

The IA is graded by the rubric you've probably memorized by now, manipulation skills basically means "don't be a (really bad word) during labs, don't throw acids on people, don't shock people in physics, yada yada". Group4 is graded by your teacher as well, I don't know the rubric for it though. And exams are exams.

Manipulation skills are graded during labs and the group4 project. But the project itself gets graded also. So the group4 project accounts for two aspects of your overall grade.