Complete Guide to the IB Biology IA: Tips & Ideas

This blog post about the Bio IA is written by Asha, a prolific Lanterna tutor. She is currently studying biochemistry at UCL.

I remember thinking that completing and submitting my Internal Assessments and Extended Essay would be the most stressful thing in my life. Oh, how wrong I was. Nonetheless, it’s still an extremely difficult period for most IB students, especially when it seems you have a million different deadlines due all at the same time. One of the most challenging subjects for me to write was my biology IA, partly because I had no idea how to go about it nor any clue of how I could fill up 12 pages of words with my research. So, to help you out, here are some tips on getting started with your Biology IA and a few topic ideas.

Top Tips for Your Biology IA

Tip #1: Write down your lab protocol beforehand

Many students tend to walk into the laboratory expecting to wrap up their experiments within the day or even a couple of hours, only to realise that perhaps the lab doesn’t have all the materials they require. Or worse, they have no idea what the exact method they need to follow is. So the first tip from me would be: plan your bio IA thoroughly beforehand! This includes figuring out what materials you need and writing down your lab protocol so you don’t hit a wall during your experiment.

Tip #2: Adjust your protocol during your bio IA experiment

So this may seem contrary to my first tip, but hear me out on this one. You’ll rarely be able to follow your protocol to the point (unless you’re very lucky, that is). Write down what you’re doing as you go along in case you end up rearranging your steps or subbing one material out for another. You’ll thank yourself later.

Tip #3: Don’t make the bio IA overly complex

I know it’s tempting to create a super-duper complex world problem-solving IA (or at least it was for me). Trust me, though, that’s not the path you want to go down. Your bio IA should be relatively simple or easy to follow. You’ll score more marks writing a detailed report on a simple experiment than writing something about a complex experiment that doesn’t make much sense beyond the surface level.

Tip #4: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

Your experiment didn’t work exactly how you wanted it to? Don’t stress out about it! Your IA is not meant to be a perfect lab report. It’s almost impossible to obtain perfect results on every trial. If something didn’t do what it was supposed to, how about you try to explain why instead of restarting your whole experiment? If anything, it gives you material to put into your evaluation 🙂

Bonus: 10 Bio IA Ideas

Anyways, that’s it for my tips. Now onto some biology IA topic ideas:

1. Measuring the effect of x (any variable – hand sanitiser, toothpaste, temperature, light, alternative medicine, sugar) on bacterial growth
2. Measuring the effect of x on seed germination
3. Analysing the effect of temperature on food decay
4. Measuring the effect of x on yeast growth
5. Modelling the spread of a disease/population growth based on different factors
6. The effect of limiting factors on photosynthesis
7. The effect of age/gender/education on reaction speed
8. The difference in CO2 levels in inhaled/exhaled air
9. The effect of pollution on bacterial growth
10. The effect of surface area: volume ratio on the rate of diffusion