Here is a step-by-step structure you can follow to complete your Extended Essay in Economics. The layout has changed recently, for example in terms of the cover sheet requirements and the reflections, but this post is up-to-date (and it includes a lot of helpful links).
Here are a few key points and other helpful links you’ll want to use:
Every year we (your humble IB teachers) read IA’s and EE’s that make the same mistake. We try to warn you about it. We try to explain this mistake, but every year a lot of people still do it.
It undermines your whole effort.
Brilliant students do it. Average students do it too. Some students who spend 40 hours on their Extended Essay research over the summer still do it.
What is it?
Before I tell you, let’s consider what makes a good doctor.
We have all been to good doctors and bad doctors. What makes the difference? What impresses us about doctors?
All doctors do “doctor things,” --they do specialist medical tests and then they understand the results. But good doctors interact with us differently. They explain those results (analysis), mentioning the complicated medical concepts and key words, but then they also explain those words clearly. They also explain the conclusions which can be drawn from the tests...
The JAM structure is a simple, three-step framework you can use to improve the quality of your writing in IB Business Management.
JAM stands for Justification, Analysis and Mini-conclusion.
Since I first created this framework (way back in 2009) it's become very popular with IB schools around the world. It works really well because it helps you (and forces you) to do a couple of things that you wouldn't normally do, which can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your writing. It raises your grade because it forces you to show your thinking and mention why the tool or model is appropriate and then to also observe what the analysis has revealed.
Let's say you’ve chosen (as your IA question) to explore whether a restaurant should relocate from one shopping mall to another one. The second location is more popular, but also more expensive, so you'll need to analyze the opportunity in a few different ways.
In the weakest IAs and EEs the student...
Starting your Extended Essay is a big challenge.
The best advice I can give you is start early and choose your research question carefully. Starting early is a time-management aspect you'll have to figure out on your own. But I can help you a lot on the second part.
Coming up with an appropriate question is about 25% of the whole battle. Your supervisor can help you with this, but often they'll leave it to you.
And you’ll want to be very careful here. With the right question almost anything is possible. With the wrong question, you're setting yourself up to fail. Most students brainstorm possible ideas, ask for suggestions and read successful EE samples (which are often available in your high school library). But I want to help you to do better than the average student. The following 4 tests will help you make sure your RQ is top notch.
A good research question (RQ) passes the following 4 tests:
Of course the question...
In this post, I wanted to share with you a resource straight out of latest online course: Business EE Mastery. I know a lot of you are working on your Extended Essays at the moment, so I thought you'd probably appreciate some extra help.
If you're interested, you can try-out my Business EE Mastery video course online for FREE at the moment. You might not need any more help, but if you do this works and I'm happy to help. Either way, here is some info that will help you with your research:
The ability to research effectively is all about two things:
You need to know how to get the information you're looking for quickly and also, be willing to think about what you're looking for. Normally people look for the wrong information. Wrong information is information that has nothing to do with your research question. And EE students use information like this all the time. You can use some information that doesn't really relate to your RQ...