I have found that the biggest chal­lenge my stu­dents are hav­ing, in terms of scor­ing the top marks in the Busi­ness IA, is related to their use of ana­lyt­i­cal tools. In gen­eral, you have a Research Ques­tion and you’re try­ing to arrive at your answer. A very com­mon mis­take is that stu­dents do a lot of […]

This is your lucky day. You are finally going to find out the secret time-management weapon which has only been known to a few wildly suc­cess­ful stu­dents. Until now. (WARNING: Do not read this unless you are pre­pared for incred­i­ble aca­d­e­mic suc­cess! How­ever, if ready to have your life com­pletely changed, read on.) I have had the […]

Some­times (nor­mally in 8-mark ques­tions) you will be asked to eval­u­ate. This is about going beyond the insights you have made from doing your analy­sis (your Dr Tests). But let’s make sure you are clear on the dif­fer­ence between analy­sis and eval­u­a­tion. By ana­lyz­ing in Busi­ness we mean giv­ing your Defi­ni­tions, Expla­na­tions, Exam­ples and Development […]

Good note tak­ing is essen­tial for suc­cess as a stu­dent (in High School and Uni­ver­sity all the more). And yet most peo­ple don’t know how to do this well. With this in mind, here is some guid­ance for you, to help you take more effec­tive notes. You are respon­si­ble for every­thing we cover, whether it’s in […]

Know­ing how to cite your sources prop­erly can get con­fus­ing. Here (with a lot of help from Mr Durbin) is a sim­pli­fied guide for how to cite your var­i­ous types of sources accord­ing to the new MLA for­mat (2011). Of course, you can always use EasyBib.com How­ever I think that using this guide you might […]

Get­ting started with your Extended Essay is a major chal­lenge. You have prob­a­bly never writ­ten any­thing this long before. So you might find your­self star­ing at a blank page, won­der­ing how exactly should you begin?I super­vise Eco­nom­ics and Busi­ness Extended Essays (EE’s) and my stu­dents gen­er­ally do very well. So I thought I’d share with […]

How to Write Com­pelling Extended Essays and Inter­nal Assess­ments in IB Eco­nom­ics and IB Busi­ness and Man­age­ment Every year we (your hum­ble Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics teach­ers) read IA’s and EE’s that make the same mis­take. Every year we talk about it and try to explain this mis­take, but every year there are a few of […]