IA: internal assessment
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The main purpose of IA is to see how you can unpack the key concept with the help of business tools.
Before we move on, look at the emoji below and try to guess what we will be talking about in this chapter.
What is BMIA?
Business Management Internal Assessment (BMIA) is a business research project that you are expected to complete in your BM course. It is assessed by your teacher in your school. However, IB checks that your teacher is fair in his/her marking (not too strict, not too generous, and understands the assessment criteria well). So, rest assured that your teacher cannot just give you a maximum mark for nothing because it will get you, your teacher, and your school in trouble.
BMIA is the same for Higher Level (HL) and Standard Level (SL) students, but it constitutes 20% of the final BM grade for HL students and 30% for SL students, so IA has more value for SL-ers.
IB recommends spending about 20 hours on completing BMIA, during which you should submit one draft, get feedback for it from your teacher, edit it and submit the final version.
The draft is not “what I’ve done so far”. It is a complete paper, fully formatted, with all citations, supporting documents, and other requirements. You only submit a draft once! If you use “what I’ve done so far” as your draft, your teacher will not be able to give you feedback on many things, so you’ll waste a chance for full, high-quality feedback for all aspects of your IA. Complete your IA entirely, and only then submit your draft to the teacher for feedback.
If you heard that “the real deadline for IA submission is April 20 or any other date”, and your teacher is expecting your IA way before that, then your teacher is right. IB requests all schools to establish their own deadlines for IA. Teachers need time to mark IAs, report to the IB Coordinator, check papers for plagiarism, cross-mark with colleagues, generate a sample, and do many other things. So don’t you dare break your teacher’s deadline! A good BM teacher is the only person who can help you with IA professionally. Follow your school’s deadline. The real deadline is your school’s deadline. Your IB Coordinator is the person who sets this deadline, and it is non-negotiable. It’s called internal assessment for a reason! Deadlines are internal, too.
You are expected to produce original work. You must not plagiarise. You have to use a referencing system for citations, i.e. for showing where data is coming from. You may simply use footnotes (more about it later). You can only use your research project for BMIA. You cannot write an Extended Essay based on the same research question and organisation.
As you have already learnt, your BMIA is a research project. It means that...