CAS Project
Summary:
Every IB Diploma student must undertake at least one CAS project in addition to the regular CAS experiences.
A CAS project should arise from: 1) an authentic need in a cause, or 2) an area of a student's strong interest and passion.
In its planning and implementation, students should utilise their talents, skills, and knowledge to identify and achieve the goals and the desired outcomes collaboratively.
A CAS project must be initiated and completed through the CAS stages, in collaboration with the project supervisor and the relevant stakeholders, over a period of time that can bring tangible results or benefit to the intended audience or the natural environment.
If you have difficulty coming up with a project idea or proposal, please feel free to contact the CAS Team.
IMPORTANT: CAS Project Guidelines
'A CAS project is a collaborative, well-considered series of sequential CAS experiences, engaging students in one or more of the CAS strands of creativity, activity, and service... [It] involves collaboration between a group of students or with members of the wider community. Students work as part of a team, with all members being contributors.'
CAS projects can be done within the ISKL community or beyond.
Your project must:
Serve or benefit individuals, community, the environment, a cause, or a body of knowledge.
Be based on your passion, talents, and interests.
Be planned with the five CAS stages
Be in one or more of the three CAS strands (Creativity, Activity, Service)
Involve your collaboration with others (e.g. other students, supervisors, community partners, etc.)
Demonstrate your initiative and leadership through your passion and vision
Be sustained for at least a month or longer, including all the investigation, preparation, action, and demonstration (e.g. a product or new features to be shared with others, as per your project design)
Be done holistically. This needs to be shown through all the material evidencing your progress and achievement, which should be housed in a shared folder for your project from the start. You can then upload these to your CAS project entry on ManageBac. These typically consist of reflections that discuss your crucial decision-making, challenges, adaptations, etc. experience; documents for planning, advertising, progress tracking; audiovisual material; and others.
CAS Project: Understanding the CAS Stages and Personal Inventory
CAS Project Basics (Summary)
What is the Difference between a CAS Experience and a CAS Project?
You are engaging with a CAS experience when you participate regularly in clubs, sports, lessons, organised events, etc. For example, you attend the weekly Earth Club meetings and participate in all of its activities/ events that are scheduled into the club's annual calendar. Or you plan and adhere to a personal fitness routine that you worked out with a qualified trainer. Or you learn to cook a wide range of dishes at home during the lockdown. All of these have you engage in certain pursuits actively for your own personal development and growth.
In a CAS project, you will take charge of organising a special event or a campaign, or creating innovative or artistic objects, etc. within your special interest group, or do so independently with other like-minded people where there are no precedents by any of your school-based groups or elsewhere. You will plan and implement the necessary steps to achieve your common goals from the beginning to the end.
Collaboration is an essential aspect of any CAS project. For example, you might... (read on):
Organise a special event within your club, for example for wildlife conservation awareness, Inclusion Week, a series of Panther Cup/ House Challenge events with the Director of Athletics, etc.
Undertake a large-scale goods drive, fundraiser, etc. based on your partner community's particular needs.
Take charge of planning and creating material for worthwhile activities in your community partnership or other clubs, going above and beyond the normal level of participation.
Develop and maintain social media accounts or websites to promote networking and community development, such as 'ISKL Past and Present' and 'Humans of ISKL'.
Initiate a 'passion project' within your special interest group or club to enhance your collaborative work, such as the Jazz Night.
Such a level of student accountability, driven by their passion and altruism, is equated with CAS projects. This will also lead students to engage with issues of global importance and ethical implications first hand.
Initiating a CAS Project through the CAS Stages
In order to begin your CAS project, learn about the five CAS stages below:
Investigation: Research the cause or an idea for your CAS project. Do the personal inventory in the 'How to Write Your CAS Project Proposal' document.
Preparation: Write your proposal and secure your CAS project supervisor. Then submit the CAS Project Approval Form signed by your supervisor to the CAS Team.
Action: Implement the steps you identified to achieve your goals in your project proposal. Collaborate with others to ensure that you are on track for achieving your desired outcomes.
Reflection: What is going well? What needs to change? Discuss these with your supervisor and collaborators as you work on your project, and record the milestones and challenges in your CAS project entry on ManageBac.
Demonstration: Share your outcomes with other people to inform and inspire.
Investigation
Begin with your personal inventory of your passion, interests, and strengths:
What am I really passionate or concerned about?
What talents and skills do I have that can be applied to turn my passion or concern into a meaningful action?
Are my ideas to initiate this meaningful action purposeful and appropriate for other people or the environment?
Then investigate what you are about to pursue. It is essential that you first gather a sufficient amount of information and data to learn more about your cause or areas of interest. This can lead you to decide what to pursue as your CAS project.
This is an action research into the following:
A cause that relates to one or more of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
An aspect of school life that would benefit from further extension, expansion, structural changes, etc.
Who you think are affected or will be implicated in your perception and ideas
What you think is affected or will be implicated in your perception and ideas
What reliable data and evidence already exists to inform your potential pursuits. Use the MISO method of investigation:
Media
Interview
Survey
Observation
After completing the above, you can go onto the next stage to prepare your project proposal and the action steps.
Preparation
Using the information and data collected in the investigation stage, identify the purpose and goals, and
Then plan your project appropriately. An effective approach is to visualise your desired outcomes first, in the demonstration stage. You may have heard of some approaches in your classes, such as the 'Backward Design':
Identify desired results
Determine acceptable evidence
Plan learning experiences and instruction.
It is also very helpful to use the SMART goal model:
Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
Achievable (agreed, attainable).
Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).
Here are some guiding questions:
What is the purpose and goals of your project?
What is the desired outcome for your project?
How will the benefit of your project to the individuals or environment be measured and demonstrated?
Will your final outcome be a major event? If so, what do you need to do in advance to organize it? Whom do you need to speak with in order to obtain permission, secure location, set up, funds, materials, etc.?
What specific role or area of responsibility will you have in this project? And your collaborators?
What is the timeline for your project?
What concrete measures or steps do you plan to take in order to achieve your goals? For example, how often should you meet and for how long to make appropriate progress to achieve your goals within the time frame that you identified above? Where do you plan meet and do your work?
Action
In this stage, you will carry out the steps that you planned in the preparation stage.
In so doing, it is important to be ready to be flexible and adaptable. This is because working with authentic needs in real-life situations will often involve unexpected turn of events. This is the nature of your CAS project work, which is always dynamic and developing, shaped by your actions and interactions with others, and other factors. It is essential that you communicate and collaborate constructively with your supervisor, collaborators, and partner community individuals. This includes respecting other people’s ideas, positions, preferences and circumstances to the best of your ability.
Therefore, you and your collaborator(s) need to:
Continue to observe the effects of your actions on the intended audience of your project or the situation at hand
Discuss with your collaborator(s) and other stakeholders what is working well and what is not
Reflect on the above in light of your desired outcomes, and determine what you need to do next. Ask yourselves:
How should you deal with challenges?
What ethical implications should you need to consider in order to achieve the desired outcomes in a way that respects the dignity and integrity of all of your stakeholders?
Then if necessary, adjust and modify any steps and plans in consultation with your supervisor and intended audience of the project.
Reflection
This needs to be on-going. As shown on the CAS stages diagram above, this needs to be ongoing throughout the process of your project: You always need to reflect on what is working well and what is not, and what you need to do next. This does not always need to be written; your discussions with all the stakeholders of the project are a form of reflection to improve the running of your project.
Take photos and videos of your work-in-progress, of your collaboration in action, etc.: These will help you review your actions.
Do not wait until the end of the project to write your reflection. You should enter at least one written reflection in your CAS project entry on ManageBac once your preparation stage has reached a certain point.
You can also record your ‘reflection’ in different forms/ media throughout the process: photos, videos, e-mail messages, Google Docs, etc.
Demonstration
When you wrote your CAS project proposal, it was recommended that you start with your goals and the desired outcomes. Throughout your CAS project implementation, you had to keep these in mind as you navigated through some challenges to achieve them.
Now that you have completed your project, you need to once again reflect on:
What were the desired outcomes of your project?
What were the actual outcomes of your project?
To what extent were you able to achieve your goals to meet the purpose of your project?
Final reflection questions:
What worked well?
What did not go so well?
What is your learning take-away from it?
Which CAS learning outcome(s) may be relevant here?
If you were to do this again, what would you do differently?
In the Reflections and Evidence section of your CAS project entry, upload the following to show your work throughout your project 'journey':
What indicators can aptly demonstrate that your project benefited your intended audience or the environment?
How can your 'final product' be shared with others?
What other material can appropriately show your collaboration to achieve your common goals?