ib extended essay tutors

ib extended essay tutors

The Impact of IB Extended Essay Tutors on Student Success

1. Introduction

Research Question: How do different types of tutors support student success in the extended essay? The following question guides the rest of the essay: 1. How was this research conducted? 2. Collaborative Research Methods Options. This independent essay focuses on a secondary research question: how WANU students’ research processes might have shifted when researching during a year during a pandemic, and how WIS librarians and mentors could support these new needs. I conducted a virtual library and online source review. I also conducted a virtual content analysis of Bennett Library research project support resources for students undertaking the IB extended essay in the 2021-2022 school year. I primarily used secondary sources, web pages, and a professional whitepaper published by librarians at sibling school WANU. I did not use primary or secondary student surveys or interviews to complete this review as I had done previously.

The International Baccalaureate’s Extended Essay is a 4,000-word independent research paper where students delve into a research topic of their choice. As the final assignment written and researched over a year, the extended essay allows students to develop research, writing, referencing, and time management skills. It also allows students to pursue a subject about which they are truly passionate. Given the number of hours students need to invest in their research project plus the importance of long-term research skills, many schools bring in retired teachers, local professionals, or extra parental help to support students in their research, acting as part-time tutors. This essay aims to understand the impact of these tutors on a student’s success in the extended essay. After this brief introduction, I discuss some background information about the extended essay.

2. The Role of IB Extended Essay Tutors

What is not clear, however, is the extent to which IB Extended Essay tutors shape the trajectory of projects and ultimately student success. It is likely that offsetting the variability in institutional provision, which is an inevitable by-product of school-based design, essays that receive greater intervention from tutors could be expected to conform more closely to the expectations of the IBO, leading to higher requisite grades or to differ from those expectations in predictable directions. In this section, tutor preoccupations and their orientation to the extended essay process and product are described, and students are followed at regular intervals through their experiment to see if their trajectories differ in important respects as a consequence. If they differ in the coproduced phase (Economically Vulnerable Group) compared with the ‘no tutor’ group at the same stage, we can infer that the non-observable baseline of familial background and cognitive ability is not significantly different between the groups and that success in gaining access to a tutor is reasonably randomly assigned.

IB Extended Essay tutors are often responsible for coaching high school applicants on what they should write for the extended essay. The job entails securing a unique subject and topic, as well as providing guidance on the formulation of research questions, thesis statements, and organizational structures. Additionally, students are encouraged to revise their work on a weekly basis according to the official recommendations of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) until they submit their draft. Instruction may also include support for the development of robust and varied arguments, guidance on how to gather data, support for citing sources, brainstorming ideas for further research, and motivation for the student to finish the project.

3. Benefits of Working with Tutors

The benefits of the one-on-one student-tutor relationship are also championed in the literature that takes a long-term, ahistorical view of tutor-student interactions. In the study of composition, for example, the effect of tutoring has been found to carry over into future classes, fostering confidence in writing, critical thinking, and self-motivation. This self-motivation can be a key factor in the positive effects academic success has on the long-term achievement of an individual. In terms of overall academic success, many high-achieving high school students who received long-term, one-on-one academic intervention have reported that it greatly enhanced the appeal of a college education. A major advantage that is seen in such studies is the development of a lifelong relationship with the tutor who can advise and answer questions on various academic topics.

Across many different disciplines, the one-on-one student-tutor relationship is often framed in dichotomous dialectics. In terms of the impact of the relationship on student success, some studies reveal significant benefits, while others find none. While additional research into the reasons for these incongruent findings is warranted, the benefits of working with IB Extended Essay Tutors are a recurring and predominant theme in the scholarship. Tutoring has been suggested to result in higher grades, greater overall satisfaction with the educational process, a better understanding of the subject, and more in-depth instruction that advances understanding. A focus on tutor-student collaboration as an important tool for the enhancement of research and writing skills is an essential part of relations-focused scholarship. Collaborations include an increased focus on primary source research, a higher amount of original thought on the part of students, and instruction on citation, the latter of which ensures academic integrity. Meanwhile, it has also been suggested that collaboration between the tutor and student in forming and phrasing research questions increases a student’s ability to think critically and learn.

4. Challenges and Limitations

The concept of academic-induced stress and its relationship to tutoring in varying and uncertain ways lurks throughout the above and in the structure of the essay. It will be revisited at various points as results become available and will also be a focus of an extensive final discussion of results once they are available after spring 2021. Notably, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic at this writing also open up new areas of exploratory investigation.

Finally, special efforts might be extended to numerically recruit examiners from large EE-year cohorts into the examiner-mentor pool. However, while this would potentially level up the coaching benefits to the most students, there may still be variations by school in the underlying rates of success achieved by the students assigned to local examiners. Additionally, the diversity of mentoring benefits to students might be reduced, with these students being potentially less likely to perceive that they were treated fairly by the IBDP.

Second, tutor and examiner constraints on student interactivity or communication should be monitored, and where possible, relaxed. There is little empirical evidence suggesting the effectiveness of tutor-student communication, but it is a persistent issue to explore in this potential literature prior to the imposition of such constraints. At present, EE students can seek a new examiner, within reason and with the agreement of the tutor. IBDP coordinators could expand or standardize this process, possibly rolling over reduced examiner public good credits or penalties as a way to indicate how “market-driven” final EE marker choice-making could maintain the public good.

First, IBDP coordinators may choose to inform tutors when there are constraints on the availability of resources that provide critical support to examiners (e.g. access to laboratories, university libraries, primary sources, or informants). Tutors could share this information with the students under their care to appropriately manage their expectations. However, confidentiality and examiner dependability would be violated if tutors not involved with specific students could not accept these limitations and spread the information widely.

There are several steps that could, in principle, reduce the influence of the challenges faced in achieving the goals of tutoring, but that have not been implemented yet within the IBDP structure or the EE tutor support environment.

5. Best Practices and Recommendations

IB extended essay supervisors have a substantial impact on student success, positively influencing student satisfaction and project scores. The development of tutor-support programs outside of the IB, such as student writing centers and tutoring labs, has not properly accounted for this previous research on student-tutor collaborations. In the next iteration of the program, the IB should consider utilizing the evidence regarding effective tutor support to create a program that appropriately supports students in the completion of their extended essays. This evidence is particularly important taking into consideration that the benefits of student-tutor collaborations may be more significant for students who may have the most to gain, such as students from low-income or first-generation backgrounds.

Best practices for tutoring extended essays. Based on the research, this section offers succinct, useful recommendations for tutors of IB extended essays. Making adjustments to a student’s research question can have a significant influence on the final product. This section outlines when and how such adjustments should occur to be most effective.

Best practices and recommendations. This section synthesizes key insights and recommendations culled from sections 1-5 of this research review. Granted, this summary is somewhat repetitive. It’s meant to be a super-compressed version of the section above, so the reader has access to the valuable content in a quick reference format.