HI Topic

[jerdlc10 0]

Hi, so i decided that i'd do my HI on the Cuban Missile Crisis time period and Kennedy because he has always intrigued me. For my RQ i still haven't really found a concrete question and the rough draft is due Thursday. So is this good or too broad? "To what extent did the Bay of Pigs lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis?"

Also, i heard that you do one HI your junior year, then a second HI your senior year. Im curious as to why.

[Emmi 1,391]

I can't really comment on your research question too much because we did not study the Cold War at my school, but it is on a quite overdone topic. Even if something is really interesting to you, perhaps find something that's not done by 2000 other students around the world every single exam session. It also seems a bit broad as it sits right now. When you write your IA, only about 1200 words are actually spent presenting the evidence and then analyzing it. That seems like a lot now, but that's really only a couple really solid paragraphs. You really do not have a lot to work with, so you want a research question that's quite narrow (but not narrow enough that there's nothing you can write about it).

It's only your school that's making you do two HIs, not an IB thing. At my school, we only did one IA, and we did it in the winter of our second year. Your school probably does this to get everyone used to the format and to practice during the first year so the second one is likely to be better, essentially making the first a practice, or to let you do it twice and give you the benefit of using whichever you score higher on as your official IA.

[jerdlc10 0]

I can't really comment on your research question too much because we did not study the Cold War at my school, but it is on a quite overdone topic. Even if something is really interesting to you, perhaps find something that's not done by 2000 other students around the world every single exam session. It also seems a bit broad as it sits right now. When you write your IA, only about 1200 words are actually spent presenting the evidence and then analyzing it. That seems like a lot now, but that's really only a couple really solid paragraphs. You really do not have a lot to work with, so you want a research question that's quite narrow (but not narrow enough that there's nothing you can write about it).

True, but our teacher is limiting us to World war 2 and the event during some of the presidents. That's why i chose something on Kennedy