Personal Project

Criterion A

Strand (i)

Learning Goal

[Clearly state your learning goal and explain how it is connected to a personal interest]

Remember that your learning goal is different from your product. The product is what you will make or do, but the
learning goal is about what you want to learn by doing the project.

State: Give a specific name, value or other brief answer without explanation or calculation.

Explain: Give a detailed account including reasons or causes.

For Ai, it is not enough that the candidate states the learning goal and elaborates on a justification of the topic of the
personal project, even if related to a personal interest. They need to address the “connection” specifically between the
personal interest and the learning goal, or as the objective is phrasing it, how the personal interest led to the stated
learning goal - not on the connection between the project topic and personal interest.
Strand (ii)

Product
[Clearly state the product that you created and present the success criteria that you developed. Be sure to include
two or more success criteria that are appropriate for your product. Be as specific as possible, avoiding general terms
like good]

For example: I decided to create a storybook for young children that would tell the story of Rosa Parks. My goal was to
create a book that met the following specifications:

1. The story should have a clear message. This is because many children’s stories are designed to teach a specific
lesson
a. Children who read or listen to the story should recognize that Rosa Parks took a risk in order to do the right thing
2. The story should be written in words that children aged 5-8 years old can understand
3. The book should match the structure of a typical children’s storybook
b. Approximately 12-20 pages long. This is because I have noticed that many children’s stories are about this
length
c. About 2000 words. According to my research, a book this long will take 12-15 minutes to read aloud, which is a
suitable amount of time for a children’s story
d. Every page has an illustration. This will make the book visually appealing, especially for children who can’t read
yet.
e. The front cover will have a title and illustration, and the back cover will have a brief description of the story. This
is typical of story books and will get readers’ attention]

Giving a reason why you selected each success criterion is not required; however, it can help to show that the success
criteria are appropriate.

In criterion Aii, candidates need to provide information in the report about how/why their success criteria are
“appropriate”. This can be in the body of the report, as part of a rubric/table, or other ways the candidate finds
suitable. Further, to reach the highest levels their success criteria need to be detailed.
A candidate’s plan should be for achieving the product and only items in the plan relevant to the product should be
considered when awarding levels for Aiii. Other items (such as writing on criterion A, submit draft, etc.) may be helpful
for the candidate in their overall project, but should not be considered when marking this strand.

The candidate’s success criteria need to be explicitly identified in the plan. The plan for achieving the product should
be detailed, and clearly show how each of the stated success criteria are planned to be achieved.
Plan
Aiii. present a clear, detailed plan for achieving the product and its associated success criteria.
Crit B Applying Skills

Achieving the learning goal

[Explain how you applied one (or more) ATL skills to achieve your learning goal. Support your explanation with
relevant evidence or examples.

Insert supporting evidence here.

For example:

 A series of inquiry questions (information literacy)

 Sample correspondence with the project supervisor (communication)
 Screenshot of daily reminders or alerts to complete personal project tasks (organization)
 Reflection about resolving a conflict (collaboration)
 Summary of prior learning that is relevant to the project (thinking).

For example: Media literacy skills were really important in helping me with my learning goal. Because I wanted to
learn more about documentary films, there were lots of different resources I could use: watching documentaries,
reading reviews of documentaries, reading about the genre and browsing online forums for documentary makers.

This grid shows the different sources I consulted for each of my different research questions. By accessing this range
of sources, I was able to get a variety of perspectives and opinions. This was helpful because each source might be
biased by the author’s particular viewpoint, but because I synthesized lots of information for different sources there
was less bias in what I learned about documentary filmmaking.]

ATL skills: One or more of communication, collaboration, organization, affective, reflection, information literacy, media literacy, critical
thinking, creative thinking, transfer.
In the report, candidates need to be very clear about whether they are addressing ATL skill(s) that helped achieve the
learning goal or the product. The focus in objective B should be on how ATL skills were applied to achieve the learning
goal and the product. Whether the ATL skills were developed is not assessed, only how they were applied for
specifically achieving the learning goal and the product. Further, some candidates were rather elaborating on the
importance of skills in general, without specific connection to how they were applied specifically for achieving the
learning goal or the product.
Criterion C
Reflecting
Impact of the project
[Explain the impact that the project has had on you or your learning. That could refer to any aspect of having done
the project: inquiry, action and/or reflection; include progress that you made towards your learning goal, include ways
in which you have grown as a learner, such as improvement in the ATL skills or learner profile attributes; or include
you grown or changed as a result of the project.

Write this section last. It will be much easier to reflect on the impact of the whole project after you have evaluated
your product and written about how the ATL skills contributed to your product and learning goal.

For example: I learned a great deal about myself and my ability to create achievable goals. I usually have really big
ideas about what I can achieve and I almost always underestimate how long it will take me to do things. I was proud of
myself for realizing early on that it wasn’t realistic to film and edit a short documentary by January. When I realized in
November that I wasn’t going to be able to finish my documentary, I almost gave up, but then I decided to change my
goal and create a more realistic product: all of the interviews have been recorded and I have storyboards to guide the
editing. I am still really excited about my project and I plan to continue working on my documentary even after the
personal project is complete.]

Evaluating the product

[Evaluate the product based on your success criteria. Make sure that your evaluation is supported with evidence and
examples. This can be done in different formats. For example, you could write about the success criteria that you met,
the success criteria that you partially met and conclude with the criteria that you didn’t meet. If you prefer, you can
address each of your success criteria one by one in writing, a bulleted list or in a table.]

Insert supporting evidence here.

For example:

 Images showing the key features of the product

  Feedback from people who have seen or used the product

You may wish to include a few different pieces of evidence to support your evaluation. You can also use recorded
evidence in a separate file, but be sure to refer to that evidence in the text of your report.

The quality of the evaluation is more important than how many of the success criteria that you met. It’s better to have
an honest appraisal of the strengths and limitations of your product, than to claim that you have met all the success
criteria if you haven’t.

Sample
IB comments:

To qualify for the command term “describe” in Ci, the candidate needs to provide a detailed account about an impact
of the project on themselves or their learning (or several). A series of statements or outlines of various impacts do not
make it a description.

You must be evaluating the quality of their product, by systematically using your success criteria. Simply describing
the various aspects of the product (even if aligned with the success criteria) will not qualify as an evaluation, since the
command term “evaluate” requires to make an appraisal by weighing up strengths and limitations. Further, you do not
only present results from a survey or the views of others in Cii, since this does not mean that you are evaluating the
product, but rather communicating data. If you choose to survey others for opinions on the quality of your product, at
a minimum you must interpret that data to make an appraisal of the product’s quality, by weighing up strengths and
limitations.

When evaluating your product, you should carefully select evidence or detailed examples to support your claims made
against each of your success criteria.