Interim Interview & Assessed Reflection

Preparation

Before you attend your interim formal interaction, you should take some time to write reflects on a Google document. Reflect on the following topics/questions:

• Submission Process: 

  • What strategies did you use to meet your draft deadline? How successful were those strategies? 

  • How will you amend your strategies to help you better meet the final deadline?

• Research Process:

  • In your research, did you encounter any materials or data that forced you to reconsider your approach or revise your research question? Explain.

  • How successful were your methodological approaches and/or choices of sources? Did they offer the necessary results to answer your research question? Did you have to make additions or changes to your approaches and/or sources? Explain.

  • How did the extended essay change how you conduct note-taking, time management, outlining, etc?

  • Did you include a wide variety of source material (beyond simply internet sources)? What sources yielded the most useful results?

  • To what extent did the need to produce a more balanced opinion force you to do a wider reading or additional preliminary research?

• Organization and Drafting: 

  • As you drafted, to what extent did you reorganize your initial outline? Explain how and why.

  • What challenges did you face in regards to organization? How did you overcome these challenges?

  • What techniques did you use when revising the draft for submission? Did any technique work particularly well? Did any technique not work well?

  • When re-reading your draft, what concerns do you have about the organization and/or research presented?

The Interim Interaction

If you have not received feedback from your supervisor by October 3rd, politely reach out to your supervisor regarding how you can access this feedback. You must conduct the interim interaction by October 7th 2021.

When you receive your feedback, immediately request a meeting with your supervisor. Ideally this meeting should be between 24 to 48 hours after receiving your feedback. This give you enough time to process the feedback but not too much time as lead to action without clarification.

To this appointment you should bring your draft with feedback, clarifying questions you have regarding the feedback, and your reflections on the above question. It is a good idea to write your reflections regarding these question in your Researcher's Reflection Space on ManageBac.

During the meeting make notes in your Researcher's Reflection Space on ManageBac. These notes will be used to draft your interim reflection, which will be sent to the IB for assessment.

The Reflection

Use your notes as the brainstorm for your interim reflection. Keep in mind that the IB does not want a list of things you have accomplished. Instead they want to know how you have grown, what challenges you have faced and how you have overcome them. If you say everything is "going great" you will score very low. They want an honest account of why you are drawn to this topic and how and why your approach has evolved.

• 125 - 165 words

• Drafted in Google document: edit, conduct word count, and check spelling

• Pasted from Google to Managebac on EE Planning and Progress Form - Interim reflection session box

• Locked into Managebac 5 minutes after saving -- ergo draft in Google

• Counts toward Criterion E: Engagement