EXTENDED ESSAY

Nature of the extended essay

The extended essay is an in-depth study of a focused topic chosen from the list of approved Diploma Programme

Subjects —normally one of the student’s six chosen subjects for the IB diploma. It is intended to promote high-level research and writing skills, intellectual discovery and creativity. It provides students with an opportunity to engage in personal research in a topic of their own choice, under the guidance of a supervisor (a teacher in the school). This leads to a major piece of formally presented, structured writing, in which ideas and findings are communicated in a reasoned and coherent manner, appropriate to the subject chosen. It is recommended that completion of the written essay is followed by a short, concluding interview, or viva voce, with the supervisor.

The extended essay is assessed against common criteria, interpreted in ways appropriate to each subject.

The extended essay is:

• Compulsory for all Diploma Programme students

• Externally assessed and, in combination with the grade for theory of knowledge, contributes up to three points to the total score for the IB diploma

• A piece of independent research/investigation on a topic chosen by the student in cooperation with a supervisor in the school chosen from the list of approved Diploma Programme subjects, published in the Handbook of procedures for the Diploma Programme.

• presented as a formal piece of scholarship containing no more than 4,000 words

• The result of approximately 40 hours of work by the student

• concluded with a short interview, or viva voce, with the supervising teacher (recommended).

In the Diploma Programme, the extended essay is the prime example of a piece of work where the student has the opportunity to show knowledge, understanding and enthusiasm about a topic of his or her choice. In those countries where it is the norm for interviews to be required prior to acceptance for employment or for a place at university, the extended essay has often proved to be a valuable stimulus for discussion.

Overview

Information technology in a global society (ITGS) is concerned with how information technology (IT) systems affect people. All IT systems do affect people—this is why they were devised in the first place. Most IT systems are designed to bring some economic or quality-of-life benefit to people. Most also affect the way that people work. It is also true that IT systems can have deleterious effects on people’s lives—usually, but not always, unintentionally produced. An ITGS extended essay should examine how an IT system or systems has affected people in positive and/or negative ways, with particular reference to the underlying technology. An extended essay in ITGS offers an opportunity to undertake research into an IT-related topic in an area of personal interest to the student. It gives students a framework to develop research skills, to develop their technical understanding of IT, and to relate an IT system in the real world to its effects on individuals, organizations and society in general.

What is an ITGS extended essay?

An ITGS extended essay needs to focus on the social impacts (positive or negative) information technology has on society. The EE also needs to clearly cover the information technology in enough detail to make it clear how it causes the problem. In short, the EE needs to cover all parts of the ITGS triangle. As the EE guide says:

ITGS extended essay should examine how an IT system or systems has affected people in positive and/or negative ways, with particular reference to the underlying technology.

(Extended Essay Guide, First exams 2013, IB)

ITGS EEs should not be primarily focused on how technology works - topics like this might be better suited to Computer Science extended essays. For example, an EE about the best sorting algorithm or a comparison of compression technologies is not suitable as an ITGS EE because it does not focus on social impacts.

For first assessment in 2018 (first teaching in August 2016), the Extended Essay is changing. The new IB Extended Essay website includes information on the changes. It also has a table of poor questions which are too broad (a common mistake made by students), and a selection of better, more focused questions.

Examples of ITGS extended essay topics

All ITGS extended essays needs a topic area and a Research Question (RQ). Teachers can help students select a topic area but students must formulate the Research Question themselves because there are awarded marks for this in criterion A. Often a student will need to perform some initial research to ensure that sufficient sources are available to successfully complete the EE.

Business and Employment topic ideas:

  • The effectiveness of solutions to prevent online fraud
  • The use of employee monitoring technology
  • Cost savings of FOSS compared to commercial software
  • The use of social networks by small businesses

Education topic ideas:

  • The use of computer models to replace science experiments in schools
  • The impacts of 1-1 computer programmes in schools
  • The use of student information systems to improve teaching and learning
  • The privacy impacts of student tracking systems
  • Effective solutions to ensure appropriate technology use in a school

Environment topic ideas:

  • The use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) when planning construction projects
  • The awareness and impact of electronic waste
  • The use of virtualization as a method of reducing server power consumption

Health topic ideas:

  • The use of tele-medicine to treat patients in rural areas
  • The impacts of implementing electronic health records in a hospital
  • The effectiveness of mobile phone technology for distributing health advice and education
  • Software and hardware to help disabled users with poor eyesight

Home and Leisure topic ideas:

  • The impact of software / music / film piracy

Politics & Government topic ideas

  • The impacts of open government sites on service provision
  • The use of online technology for election campaigning

Examples of bad ITGS extended essay topics

I advise my students to avoid the following topics because they are either totally unsuitable to an ITGS extended essay, or because they typically lead to low quality essays being produced.

  • "Laptops in schools", "Facebook in schools", or similar. Often these topics are chosen by students looking for an "easy" option. However, in my experience the students will struggle to find reliable research relating to these topics - a lot of information out there is vague and anecdotal and students will struggle to come to any meaningful conclusion. In these cases students also frequently try to interview their friends as primary sources - a sure path to disaster.
  • Any topic where primary research cannot be performed. While "Robotics in medicine" might interest a student, finding a doctor who uses robots and is willing to be interviewed is difficult. The same applies to "Computers in space", "smart homes", and many more ITGS topics. If you cannot find primary research sources, you can't do the topic - it's that simple.
  • Topics about IT products (e.g. "New iPad released", "Faster graphics card released"). The social impact of these is minimal.
  • Topics about things which haven't happened yet or have only just happened. How can you find examples if something hasn't happened yet? (E.g: new nano-computers to be released, Saudi Arabia will monitor Blackberry use, Google will release new Google Glasses)

Focusing the Extended Essay Research Question

The EE title needs to be accompanied by an Extended Essay Research Question (RQ). Students often think that 4000 words is a lot (it isn't!) and subsequently write a very broad research question that addresses a wide range of technologies, people, or areas. Instead students should narrow down their question and use their 4000 words to reach the appropriate level of depth and detail.

Examples which are too broad

  1. The effects of e-waste
  2. Social media and business

Better examples

  1. An evaluation of the e-waste policies of small businesses in El Salvador
  2. The effectiveness of social media for customer relations in the hotel industry in El Salvador

Notice how the better examples all refer to a specific stakeholder or small group of stakeholders rather than "people", "businesses", or other broad group. Equally the technology which is the focus of the EE is clearly stated, and the aspect which will be investigated ("evaluation of policies", "effectiveness of social media for customer relations").

ITGS Extended Essay Checklist

The following is an initial checklist to see if a topic qualifies for an ITGS extended essay:

  1. Are you able to reference social impacts and ethical issue(s)?
  2. Are these issues and impacts caused by information technology?
  3. Do you have sufficient, reliable sources to support these issues and impacts?
  4. Are you able to find expert stakeholders to perform quality primary research?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you may need to think of a different topic.

Choice of topic

The choice of topic may result from a news story, issues brought up in class discussion or a personal interest. The topic must be firmly focused on an issue that has IT at its core. A topic that concentrates on another discipline but which has an IT angle is not suitable for the development of an ITGS extended essay. Students writing an ITGS extended essay must be capable of demonstrating an in-depth knowledge of some aspect of IT. It is expected that IT terminology is used accurately in order to describe the system or systems under investigation, and that a level of expertise is shown that goes well beyond general knowledge. IT provides a rich field for the choice of an extended essay because of its extremely rapid development. We are living through an information revolution that is so far-reaching that unprecedented moral and ethical issues are emerging. This gives the ITGS extended essay student much opportunity to be original and innovative in approach—qualities that can enhance and enrich an extended essay in ways that few other subject areas can match. Much of the evidence quoted will inevitably be obtained from internet sources, but essays should also include other sources, such as books, newspapers and magazines, as well as primary evidence collected by the student. Students should be aware of the pitfalls in relying on unsubstantiated material, from whatever source, when undertaking their research. The essay should, therefore, include some critical analysis of the evidence. In choosing their topic, students are strongly advised to concentrate on developing a research question, carrying out relevant research, and applying IT theory, tools and techniques. It is important that the research question is sufficiently focused to allow adequate treatment within the word limit. Topics that depend entirely on summarizing general secondary data should be avoided, as they are likely to lead to an essay that is essentially narrative or descriptive in nature. However, the effective use of relevant secondary data to support primary data in answering the research question will be fully rewarded by the examiner. Students are encouraged to research a current issue. A successful essay will concentrate on one issue, but the issue should be significant enough to provide a wide variety of suitable evidence. The following examples of titles for ITGS extended essays are intended as guidance only. The pairings illustrate that focused topics (indicated by the first title) should be encouraged rather than broad topics (indicated by the second title). • “An investigation into the ways in which IT can assist patients with motor-nerve damage” is better than “IT and physical disabilities”.

• “Flight simulators as a means of training pilots to deal with wake turbulence” is better than “Virtual reality systems”.

• “Measures that can be taken to protect the transmission of banking information” is better than “Hacking”.

• “How the layering of network protocols has contributed to the rapid development of music downloads” is better than “Music and the internet”.

• “Issues in developing natural language interfaces” is better than “The uses of robots”.

• “How Open Source software has led to improved corporate networking” is better than “Modern operating systems”.

It is essential that the topic has an IT system or IT systems at its core. This means that the system(s) concerned must involve some form of data processing. Essays that focus on technology such as engineering, or on a science topic, are not suitable for ITGS essays. Similarly, an essay that has a social problem as its focus with only tenuous relevance to IT is unlikely to have sufficient depth.

Treatment of the topic

Although an ITGS extended essay is not intended to be an exercise in demonstrating IT skills, it must clearly demonstrate in-depth technical understanding of the chosen area. Students who do not have well-developed IT practical skills are unlikely to show the level of insight that is required for the highest levels of attainment. Although an ITGS essay should clearly demonstrate technical expertise, the inclusion of program code, markup codes (for example, HTML) or detailed electronics should only ever be supportive and not the main focus of the essay. It may help if the student defines the topic chosen for study in the form of a research question, followed by a statement of intent that indicates which broad process is going to be used in answering the question. In this way, the approach to the topic chosen may be even further clarified. Some examples of this could be the following.

Topic The future of natural language interfaces

Research question

To what extent is it likely that natural language interfaces will replace the keyboard in the production of office documents?

Approach Primary data is collected through interviews with university lecturers and researchers working in the field of natural language interfaces (qualitative research). The algorithms used, difficulties faced and progress to date are discussed. Questionnaires are emailed to office managers to determine to what extent there is a need for natural language data input and whether this could improve productivity. Public domain examples of natural language software are downloaded and its effectiveness assessed. Secondary research is collected by accessing internet-based reports from universities working in the field.

Topic The effectiveness of e-learning as an enhancement to conventional teaching

Research question

Does the addition of e-learning systems improve the performance of students in mathematics?

Approach an internet survey of e-learning systems, highlighting methodologies used by different systems. Quantitative comparisons are made of examination results before and after its adoption from schools that have adopted e-learning methods. Teacher and student opinions are surveyed by issuing questionnaires to teachers who have adopted e-learning and those who have rejected it. Secondary research is carried out by surveying teacher discussion boards.

Topic The impact of Open Source software

Research question

Has the wide availability of Open Source software resulted in improved security for networks? Approach Primary research is carried out by means of circulating questionnaires to network managers. Network managers who make use of Open Source are interviewed. Questionnaires are emailed to website developers. A study is made of an example of an Open Source e-business system. Secondary research is carried out by looking at recent articles in IT trade magazines and surveying “help” websites for network managers.

Assessment criteria EE

Criterion A: Focus and method

This criterion focuses on the topic, the research question and the methodology. It assesses the explanation of the focus of the research (this includes the topic and the research question), how the research will be undertaken, and how the focus is maintained throughout the essay.

5-6

The topic is communicated accurately and effectively.

  • Identification and explanation of the research topic is effectively communicated; the purpose and focus of the research is clear and appropriate.

The research question is clearly stated and focused.

  • The research question is clear and addresses an issue of research that is appropriately connected to the discussion in the essay.

Methodology of the research is complete.

  • An appropriate range of relevant source(s) and/or method(s) have been applied in relation to the topic and research question.
  • There is evidence of effective and informed selection of sources and/or methods.

Criterion B: Knowledge and understanding

This criterion assesses the extent to which the research relates to the subject area/discipline used to explore the research question, or in the case of the world studies extended essay, the issue addressed and the two disciplinary perspectives applied, and additionally the way in which this knowledge and understanding is demonstrated through the use of appropriate terminology and concepts.

5-6

Knowledge and understanding is excellent.

  • The selection of source materials is clearly relevant and appropriate to the research question.
  • Knowledge of the topic/discipline(s)/issue is clear and coherent and sources are used effectively and with understanding.

Use of terminology and concepts is good.

  • The use of subject-specific terminology and concepts is accurate and consistent, demonstrating effective knowledge and understanding.

Criterion C: Critical thinking

This criterion assesses the extent to which critical-thinking skills have been used to analyse and evaluate the research undertaken.

10-12

The research is excellent.

  • The research is appropriate to the research question and its application is consistently relevant.

Analysis is excellent.

  • The research is analysed effectively and clearly focused on the research question; the inclusion of less relevant research does not significantly detract from the quality of the overall analysis.
  • Conclusions to individual points of analysis are effectively supported by the evidence.

Discussion/evaluation is excellent.

  • An effective and focused reasoned argument is developed from the research with a conclusion reflective of the evidence presented.
  • This reasoned argument is well structured and coherent; any minor inconsistencies do not hinder the strength of the overall argument or the final or summative conclusion.
  • The research has been critically evaluated.

Criterion D: Presentation

This criterion assesses the extent to which the presentation follows the standard format expected for academic writing and the extent to which this aids effective communication.

3-4

Presentation is good.

  • The structure of the essay clearly is appropriate in terms of the expected conventions for the topic, the argument and subject in which the essay is registered.
  • Layout considerations are present and applied correctly.
  • The structure and layout support the reading, understanding and evaluation of the extended essay.

Criterion E: Engagement

This criterion assesses the student’s engagement with their research focus and the research process. It will be applied by the examiner at the end of the assessment of the essay, and is based solely on the candidate’s reflections as detailed on the RPPF, with the supervisory comments and extended essay itself as context.

5-6

Engagement is excellent.

  • Reflections on decision-making and planning are evaluative and include reference to the student’s capacity to consider actions and ideas in response to challenges experienced in the research process.
  • These reflections communicate a high degree of intellectual and personal engagement with the research focus and process of research, demonstrating authenticity, intellectual initiative and/or creative approach in the student voice.

Reference: http://occ.ibo.org/ibis/documents/dp/drq/extended_essay/d_0_eeyyy_gui_1012_1_e.pd