I'm going to post a weekly series of top tips on how to reach the highest markbands for each criterion of the IA. Often it's little oversights by students that contributes to bringing their overall achievement in the IA down by a level. These tips will highlight some common oversights and how to remedy them.

These tips are summarised in attached images on the post each week.

HL IA Criterion A - Research proposal (Top markband 3 marks)
Most students will get 2 out of 3 for Criterion A as it's largely a matter of following instructions. Top tips to get to 3 out of 3 are:

1. Follow the RP outline - this is located on pages 80 to 81 in the subject guide. This sounds like a really basic tip but if students can include all these elements that are generally appropriate, they can score 2 out of 3 quite easily. If two or more of these elements are missing, that's automatically 1 out of 3 even if the RP is very well written. There are sample IAs on IBIS. Please show them to students to give them an idea what an RP should look like. Even better, show them examples from your previous cohorts.
2. Justify the choice of tools/techniques/theories - I find most students miss out on 3 out of 3 because they simply describe the areas of the syllabus to be covered. For example 3.3 Break-even analysis will be used to analyse the break-even point of Company X. When I see statements like this I always ask students why? Why do you need to know the break-even point of the firm to answer your research question? How is it relevant? Students must explain how their selected tool/technique/theory is relevant to i) the business and ii) the problem that is being investigated.
3. Find genuine anticipated difficulties - I'm going to go bananas if I see anymore generic anticipated difficulties ? Popular generic difficulties include biased sources, limited sample sizes and privacy concerns. These show no genuine understanding of the challenges of trying to answer the research question. To encourage students to really think about this in the context of their business, I like to prompt them with two questions:

• What are you afraid of not being able to find out from the firm? Why?
• What are you afraid of not being able to accomplish in your research? Why?

I encourage them to be candid and write about three of the most important ones (and provide solutions).

SL IA Criterion A - Supporting documents (Top markband 4 marks)

Most students will get 3 out of 4 for Criterion A as it's largely a matter of following instructions. Top tips to get to 4 out of 4 are:

1. Provide a range of ideas and views - often students miss out on getting 4 out of 4 because their SDs are too one-sided. A way to provide a range of ideas and views are to suggest students to find five SDs as follows:

• Two SDs that are in favour of the research question.
• Two SDs that are not in favour of the research question.
• One SD of financial data related to the research question.

This will provide different viewpoints on the issue and quantitative and qualitative information. Voila, range of ideas and views presented.

2. Provide excerpts when using very long supporting documents - this is frequently a problem when financial data is selected from the annual report. Annual reports of firms often run 100+ pages long. That is much too long for a SD. Make sure that the title of the SD clearly states that it is an excerpt from the original (very long) SD.

3. Highlight points that are referred to by the written commentary in the SD - every year it seems like the examiner's report says the same thing, that students are not highlighting the information that was used in the SDs. Make life easier for the examiner moderating the IA and highlight the text or key financial figures used. Personally I think it builds up unconscious goodwill with the examiner moderator that could possibly work in favour of students. I have no guarantee that it will contribute to goodwill but it doesn't hurt at all, especially as the examiners have requested it.

Would love to hear your top tips in the comments below. I've been teaching BM for 12 years and I'm still learning new tips and tricks everyday.

Also, if you're feeling unsure about how to conduct and mark the IAs, I highly encourage you to take a workshop either with the IB or Paul Hoang's highly rated workshops via InThinking. Paul's got IA workshops coming up on the 9th November 2021 (HL IA https://inthinking.net/think-ins/771) and 10th November 2021 (SL IA https://inthinking.net/think-ins/772).

All the best!

Vivien