As a Personal Project examiner, I’ve marked a lot of Personal Projects and these are a few tips, recommendations and pet peeves that I’ve picked up along the way.
Try to choose original and unique goals. There are some that are so overdone. Even with really interesting learning goals I often see that the product is a slideshow presentation or a webpage or booklet. For example, “I want to learn about the specialty parts in my dad’s racing car so I’m going to… make a slideshow presentation.” Or my new favorite, “I want to learn how to roller skate backwards so I’m going to… make a slideshow.” Try to also avoid “I want to raise awareness so I’m going to create a website/poster/flier/booklet/etc.” Not only are they usually not effective in actually raising awareness, but they’re just so overdone. Another really common topic is recipe books, but these can actually be really well done if you have a strong personal connection to the project.
Remember your project goal consists of two parts: the learning goal and the product goal. Learning goals need to be knowledge or skills that you personally want to acquire, not knowledge or skills you already already have or knowledge or skills you want to share with others.
Your learning goal needs to be connected to your own personal interests, but often it’s easier to explain personal connections rather than personal interests, so "I wanted to learn to crochet because I always remember my grandmother making me toys…" instead of "I’m really interested in crochet."
When choosing your product goal, consider if creating the product will help you achieve your learning or do you need to achieve your learning goal in order to be able to create the product? Either is fine, but try to stay away from products that are just evidence of you having completed the learning goal, such as “I’ll take a video of myself doing a Backside Tailslide on my skateboard.” Remember your product goal doesn’t need to be tangible (i.e. a physical or digital product). Your product could be doing a Backside Tailslide on your skateboard. You will probably need to film yourself doing it in order to evaluate your achievement, but your goal and success criteria should be based on doing a good Backside Tailslide, not on filming a good video.
You need to pick something that would be achievable in about 25 hours of work, including all planning, preparation, drafting, etc.
These criteria should be qualities of a finished product that you can use to evaluate whether or not it is a “good” product.
You should also take into consideration how you will weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each criteria, not just how it will be measured, if you want to get to the 7/8 band in your reflection. Some criteria such as cost or page numbers only lend themselves to a simple yes/no answer instead of a real evaluation. Something such as “uses high quality but cost-effective materials” would leave more room for evaluation.
If you will be creating something, doing a SWOT analysis of a similar real product, can really help you see what qualities are necessary for a “good” product.
I’m not a big fan of using the standard design criteria (Aesthetics, Form, Function, Cost, Materiales, Audience, etc.). It can work well, but most often students just identify the cost/audience/materials instead of considering what qualities their product should have in order to achieve that. So not, "my audience is teenagers," but "because my audience is teenagers my product needs too…"
The plan is just for the product itself, not the brainstorming or research you do before creating the product or the drafting of the report after.
Your plan should show how you will achieve each of the success criteria that you established for your product. So consider each of your criteria, what will you need to do, step by step in order to achieve that criteria? Why or how is that step necessary to achieve your product goal?
The plan should be detailed, so try to consider each little step you will need to take to achieve your product goal.
Use your ATL Skills document to keep track of all the evidence of what you’re doing as you complete the project. Emails, text messages, to-do lists, pictures or videos, etc. Also keep up with the journal responses. If you do this little by little, then when you sit down to draft the report you can just look through what you’ve collected and choose the best examples to show how you have applied your ATL skills to the learning and product goals.
Remember you're trying to collect examples of how or why specific ATL skills helped you achieve your learning and product goals - so not just examples of using those skills or even improving those skills, but rather examples of skill use that was essential to being able to achieve your goals.
Page/Time Limits
Examiners consider the "main" report first, whether that is written or audio, then any appendices in either format. Only the bibliography does not count toward the limits.
A title page, table of contents or introduction section in the report is not necessary and just takes up space. A title is nice, but then just start directly with Criterion A: Planning.
Double spacing is not required (although less than single spacing is REALLY annoying), but margins should be at least 2 cm all the way around, font at least 11-points, and all evidence submitted as images needs to be legible within the regular page margins and without having to zoom in.
We evaluate what’s submitted even if it’s incorrectly formatted, cut off or illegible. Text or images that are too small or illegible would be considered implicit (1-2 band maximum).
We can’t click on hyperlinks. The software just gives us an image of the report, not a text-rich document, so nothing is clickable or even selectable to copy/paste.
The report should not include any "identifying information," that includes your name, your supervisor's name, the school name, or the names of other people related to the school including in the body of your report or even in the pictures you use for your evidence.
Report Structure
Students must not only address all strands of all three objectives, but the structure of the report should follow those strands exactly. That means the objectives and strands from the assessment criteria should literally be your headings and subheadings for the report.
Audio reports should also follow the same structure using the objectives. I still don’t recommend oral reports, though. I have yet to see one done well.
If you use both written and audio formats, pick one as the principle method and refer to the other format, just like you would use information in an appendix, e.g. "refer to evidence in written report section A.ii." or "refer to minute 2:34 of the audio file..."
Description, explanation, or evidence provided in the wrong section would be considered implicit, which would only get you in the 1-2 band.
Writing Recommendations
Use “because” a lot or “the reason for…” “the cause of…”. Always give the reason why decisions are made (explain), to get to the 7-8 band.
Don’t just skip to the top band of the criteria in your reflection, or you can miss required pieces that don’t get repeated. Work your way up: state, describe, AND explain.
In general, less is more. One personal interest, ATL skill, impact, etc., that is thoroughly explained (reasons and/or causes), and supported with detailed evidence/examples will score much better than a long list of interests/skills/impacts that are all just outlined or described.
Criterion A - Planning
A.i. - Learning Goal
Don’t include the whole brainstorming process (e.g. When we first heard about the Personal Project…), but rather simply state the learning goal and then explain the reason(s) why your personal interest led to that specific learning goal.
Remember again to work your way up the criteria, if you just state your learning goal and give a brief account of how your personal interest led to that goal, that's outlining (3-4 band), even if you're listing reasons or causes. You can't "skip" the describing part (giving a detailed account), so state, describe, and explain how your personal interest led to choosing your learning goal.
This strand does not ask you to provide evidence, so including pictures or charts like mind maps here, really just takes up space.
A.ii. - Product Goal & Success Criteria
You only need to state your product goal here, even to reach the highest bands, but it is often nice to get a little detail about how your product goal is connected to your learning goal.
The biggest part of this strand is to “present multiple appropriate, detailed success criteria for the product.” See the section above on Setting Success Criteria for your Product, for tips on creating appropriate and detailed success criteria. If you did a good job creating your success criteria at the beginning of the process, for this part of the report you just need to copy/paste the table with your criteria.
Remember the responsibility is on you to show that your criteria are appropriate, which should be justified by your research. Examiners do not evaluate the criteria as appropriate, only if students adequately address the criteria’s appropriateness or not.
A.iii. - Plan
The key to reaching the 7-8 band here is showing how your plan considered each of the product’s success criteria. It often works well to include an introductory paragraph describing how you identified the steps you needed to take to achieve each of your success criteria and then just label each step in the plan with the appropriate criterion.
Present means “offer for display, observation, examination or consideration” so you need to paste in your entire plan (calendar, timeline, etc.), not just an example.
The plan is just for achieving your product goal, don’t include other activities like brainstorming, researching, drafting the report, or the Personal Project Fair.
Criterion B - Applying Skills
This section must be separated and include subheadings for B.i. ATL skills applied to help achieve the learning goal and B.ii. ATL skills applied to help achieve the product goal. I also really appreciate the students who use subheadings to identify the ATL skill they’re referring to for each strand.
Here is one of the most important places where the less is more recommendation comes in. One ATL skill, that is thoroughly explained (reasons and/or causes), and supported with detailed evidence or examples will score much better than a long list of skills that are all just outlined or described.
Remember to focus on explaining how or why specific ATL skills helped you achieve your learning and product goals - so not just examples of using those skills or even improving those skills, but rather examples of skill use that was essential to achieving your goals.
To get to the highest bands on this criteria you need to:
Give a detailed account of the reasons or causes for why you applied the ATL skill in the way that you did to achieve your goal
Support that explanation with detailed examples or evidence. The word support is the key here - don't just refer to the example, but analyze how the evidence or example shows the way you applied the skill to achieve your goal.
Criterion C - Reflecting
C.i. - Impact
This is the other part of the report where less is more. One impact, that is thoroughly explained (reasons and/or causes) will score much better than a long list.
Since you just finished an entire section on the ATL skills, describing the impact of the project on your ATL skills, although valid, often comes off as just repetitive. Reflection on the impact of the learning goal, learner profile, or personal growth is more impactful.
This strand does not ask you to provide evidence, so including pictures here, really just takes up space.
C.ii. - Product evaluation
Explicitly state whether the product was achieved and present evidence of this. (Remember, work your way up the bands.)
To reach even the 5/6 band, you need to evaluate your product based on your success criteria. That means for each of the success criterion you need to:
Consider both the strengths and limitations of your product
Support your evaluation with evidence or examples (to get to the 7-8 band this must be specific evidence or detailed examples). Again the word support is key here - don't just present or refer to the evidence/example, but analyze how it shows the quality of your product that you are referring to.
Remember to be considered an evaluation, it must be your own. Using survey results or expert opinions to support your evaluation is often very effective, but you should interpret the data as it applies to your own evaluation of the product, not simply state that the criterion was achieved because so-and-so said so.