Getting Started: The IB Extended Essay

I am preparing for an upcoming Popcorn with Colin where students at an IB school have been invited to discuss their ideas for an extended essay. The IB Extended Essay “…is an independent, self-directed piece of research, finishing with a 4,000-word paper” and a mandatory part of the IB Diploma program. I have an interest in this activity because I was an IB Diploma student when I was in high school, and still have vivid memories of my extended essay project work.

The plan for the Popcorn session is to open with a discussion about “what is research?” for the purpose of shared viewpoints and expectations.

Then we would move into a reveal-type segment where we explore the ideas that the students have for their extended essays. We would tease these ideas for creativity, connectedness & design thinking. Our discussion about creativity could look into personal curiosity, originality & innovation where concepts such as comfort zone, out-of-the-box thinking, and uncertainty. Connectedness would deal with awareness of published scholarly literature as well as personal experience, and how to support/justify a research project. And design thinking would be about sketching a human-centered problem statement and vision using the YCISL Innovators Toolkit method.

The third component of our session would be on the suggestion of the need for a research plan & the design elements; this is intended to encourage good documentation habits as well as methodical forward-thinking skills.

That’s probably plenty for our 90-minute session where I hope to have plenty of reciprocal learning.