sakuranora Posted April 21, 2014 Report Share Posted April 21, 2014 I am in a smaller IB school and my HL Biology teacher is not very well informed or helpful. What I have been told is that the Group 4 project must be individual and must have to do with biology. I am not sure, especially after looking at the posts here, how accurate this is. Please help me understand the group 4 project, as I do not know what I am supposed to do. I am also looking for topic ideas having to do with physiology or virology if anyone has any ideas, but my primary concern is understanding the group 4 project in general. My teacher gave us the assignment yesterday, due in two weeks. Please help me. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ctrls Posted April 21, 2014 Report Share Posted April 21, 2014 ...you may want to speak to your teacher and IB coordinator about this, because it should be a collaborative group project - which you are graded accordingly on (it's one of the aspects of the criteria). The basic information is outlined on the Biology syllabus (and any other group 4 syllabus), but it's generally an informal experiment/investigation that you carry out as a group. Note that the IB does prefer the project to span across multiple science subjects, but it's not required (some schools require you to do this however, so a lot of online guides may say it's a requirement, even if it isn't for you). Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElvenRanger Posted April 21, 2014 Report Share Posted April 21, 2014 ^ctrls is right. You're graded on such criteria as interpersonal skills, self-reflective abilities, etc. it should NOT be an individual project at ALL. The main purpose of Group IV project is to make IB students work collaboratively on an issue.And...2 weeks? What on earth? Is your bio teacher sure she isn't asking for an IA (lab report/experiment)? Because my school gave us like two *months* to work on it, not two *weeks*.I would talk to your IB coordinator about this, because honestly it sounds like your bio teacher's more than a little confused about how IB works.As for your topic...you're supposed to be able to discuss the social, environmental, ethical etc. implications. So maybe focus on major diseases that are still affecting humanity today? You could probably do an entire 30 minute spiel on cancer alone, but there's still a lot of things like HIV/AIDS, malaria, diabetes, etc. you could focus on/give a brief overview on.If your entire bio class's focus is on virology, maybe choose one disease and stick to it (explaining why, of course, because this is IB; maybe one of your relatives was diagnosed with it?). If not, then you could probably give a broader, more general overview of the diseases that are most interesting/relevant to you.Hope this helps and best of luck! 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sakuranora Posted April 21, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2014 I have talked to him and he has insisted that it is an individual project and that it must be an experiment based in the outdoors. I understand that his requirement may be that it must be an experiment having to do with nature, but we have only two and a half weeks (a little more than I previously thought). We usually have one week maximum to finish a lab.I am concerned because I definitely enjoy the sciences, and given the opportunity to explore something that we get to entirely choose is invigorating, but I also definitely want to still get a good mark on the IB. I would like to talk to both the IB coordinator and the Biology teacher, but every time I talk to the IB coordinator, he says that he doesn't know, ask the Bio teacher, and the Bio teacher just tells me that it has to be individual.For my project, I was thinking about modelling the spread of a virus among a population. Does anyone know how I might go about doing that? Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
elaifyanre Posted April 21, 2014 Report Share Posted April 21, 2014 The time given is normal but the requirement is quite strange.Download the sciences syllabus (anyone of them, use the biology one if you like) and show the group 4 project part to your teacher, because his requirement contradicts with the IB markscheme and it would confuse everyone. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrett !? Posted April 21, 2014 Report Share Posted April 21, 2014 I semi understand where you're coming from, my Group 4 project was me for Chemistry and one of my friends for Biology. Our overarching topic was plants and each of us did an experiment related to our science and then put them on our trifold board and came up with a five minute speech that explained our individual experiments and tied them together. For your project your supposed to do an experiment of some sort, I don't think you're allowed to just research something and write about it. My partner investigated how the complexity of a plants root system affects its growth by taking a plant at different stages of life and measuring how much they grew under the same conditions in one week. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thrashmaster Posted April 21, 2014 Report Share Posted April 21, 2014 ^ctrls is right. You're graded on such criteria as interpersonal skills, self-reflective abilities, etc. it should NOT be an individual project at ALL. The main purpose of Group IV project is to make IB students work collaboratively on an issue. And...2 weeks? What on earth? Is your bio teacher sure she isn't asking for an IA (lab report/experiment)? Because my school gave us like two *months* to work on it, not two *weeks*. I would talk to your IB coordinator about this, because honestly it sounds like your bio teacher's more than a little confused about how IB works. As for your topic...you're supposed to be able to discuss the social, environmental, ethical etc. implications. So maybe focus on major diseases that are still affecting humanity today? You could probably do an entire 30 minute spiel on cancer alone, but there's still a lot of things like HIV/AIDS, malaria, diabetes, etc. you could focus on/give a brief overview on. If your entire bio class's focus is on virology, maybe choose one disease and stick to it (explaining why, of course, because this is IB; maybe one of your relatives was diagnosed with it?). If not, then you could probably give a broader, more general overview of the diseases that are most interesting/relevant to you. Hope this helps and best of luck! My school only gave us two weeks to do it We had awful results, all of us. But we worked collaboratively At least, I like to think so. They haven't told us what we received yet. To the OP: Your teacher and coordinator are crazy! They can't not do that. That's like saying you must write your language B exams in your language A... it is simply wrong and will lose you lots of marks! If this is truly the Group 4 project, and is going to be sent to the IB, you need to get them to change this. Here is the rubric: http://www.biology4friends.org/uploads/1/0/0/4/10044856/7170267.png?642 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrett !? Posted April 21, 2014 Report Share Posted April 21, 2014 Group 4 projects aren't sent to IB...? I'm almost positive its just a check if you did it and you get the points or you don't... Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thrashmaster Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 Group 4 projects aren't sent to IB...? I'm almost positive its just a check if you did it and you get the points or you don't...It is part of the internal assessed marks. I guess it might not be moderated by the IB, so 'sending off' might not have been the proper words to use. But if the OP does an individual Group 4 project, those marks cannot be determined fairly. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sakuranora Posted April 22, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 (edited) I addressed all of this to my teacher, and I plan to show him the rubric tomorrow, but he said that if we were in groups, then only one person's creativity would be assessed because "some are movers and shakers and some are followers, so I prefer to assess everyone's personal creativity". On the plus side, apparently he gives everyone full marks anyway, but I still want to do it right. I feel its not honest of him to do it the way that he does. I have decided on my topic however, I am modeling the spread of avian flu among the bird populations in my area. Edited April 22, 2014 by sakuranora Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thrashmaster Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 I addressed all of this to my teacher, and I plan to show him the rubric tomorrow, but he said that if we were in groups, then only one person's creativity would be assessed because "some are movers and shakers and some are followers, so I prefer to assess everyone's personal creativity". On the plus side, apparently he gives everyone full marks anyway, but I still want to do it right. I feel its not honest of him to do it the way that he does. I have decided on my topic however, I am modeling the spread of avian flu among the bird populations in my area. Everyone gets full marks... I wish I were at your school, man. That is not the case where I go. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chio1012 Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 That's is really weird how he insists it's an individual project...the name itself hints that it should be a collaboration between all the sciences, including ESS if your school offers it. You're right in that each group has an overarching theme and the biologists, chemists, physicists (and ESS-ists) go off in their own groups to work on a branch, then come back and pool results together to produce a combined conclusion.For ours, we skipped a whole day of classes to spend time on it, and our group's idea was lemonade. The biologists investigated whether it would cool you down after exercising by measuring heart rate, the chemists investigated how healthy it is (ie. how much vitamin c there is in different types of lemons) and the physicists investigated the optimum time you should drink lemonade in, after you put ice in it (something to do with the melting of the ice and diluting it etc). It was a pretty good time as in the end we did get to drink the lemonade we made Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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