Planning the inquiry project

Introduction

The inquiry project is an individual investigation into the impacts and implications of a digital system for people and communities. It is the one part of the course where the student chooses the topic, finds the evidence and decides how to present it, so the quality of the planning shapes almost everything that follows.

Planning means more than picking a subject. A strong project starts from a specific, existing digital system, asks an open question that can be answered in ten minutes, and connects that question to the course's concepts, content and contexts. It also means organising time, recording research as it happens and gathering evidence safely and ethically.

What the project is

The project follows an inquiry of the student's own design. The teacher gives feedback and advice, but the student leads each stage: setting the focus, choosing sources, analysing impacts and implications, and presenting the conclusions. This is called an open inquiry, the last point on a range that runs from directed inquiries (the teacher sets the focus and models each stage) through guided inquiries (teacher and student share the work) to open ones.

The three parts of the submission

Every project is submitted as three separate items.

Source: IB Digital Society guide (first assessment 2024), internal assessment details.

The project is worth 24 marks. It counts for 30% of the final grade at SL and 20% at HL, and the task, limits and criteria are identical at both levels. Teachers mark the work against the criteria, and the IB then checks a sample of the school's marking externally (moderation). The IB recommends about 30 hours of teaching and learning time for the project, covering the explanation of requirements, planning, research, analysis, building the presentation and acting on feedback.

Rules that shape planning from day one

Several rules affect decisions long before any writing starts.

• Limits are firm. Words beyond 1,500 in the IPD and anything after the tenth minute of the presentation are not assessed. A plan that needs twenty minutes to answer its question loses its conclusion to the time limit.

• No appendices. Submitted work must not include appendices, because they are not read. Interview transcripts, survey tables and extra notes stay in the research journal; only what fits within the limits counts.

• One full draft. The teacher gives feedback at each stage, and comments on one complete draft of the IPD and presentation, giving oral or written advice without editing. The next version handed in is the final one, so the draft should be genuinely complete.

• No double use. Work submitted for the inquiry project cannot also be used for the extended essay or any other Diploma assessment.

• Own work. The project must be entirely the student's own work, and every idea, image, clip or statistic from someone else must be cited where it is used and listed in the references.

The inquiry stages

Each inquiry in the course, including the assessed project, moves through four stages: focus, explore, investigate, and reflect and share. The stages are iterative: they overlap and do not always follow a straight line. Reading sources often shows that a question is too broad, which sends the student back to refine the focus; analysis may expose a gap that calls for one more source. The inquiry cycle diagram shows the stages as a loop with feedback at the centre.

Each stage corresponds closely to one part of the submission and one assessment criterion:

Choosing a digital system and a real-world example

What counts as a digital system

A digital system is a combination of technologies, data and people that creates, stores, processes or distributes data. Apps, platforms, smart devices, algorithms, robots and networks all qualify. The project's real-world example must involve a specific and existing digital system: one that is actually in use, with a name, a place and people who are affected by it. It may be local (a city's transport app) or global (a platform used in many countries), and a useful approach is to combine the two by studying a global system in one local setting.

The following examples show the difference between a general area and a usable example.

A project about "social media" cannot be finished in ten minutes and has no clear group of people to analyse. A project about one platform feature in one setting has identifiable stakeholders, available evidence and room for depth.

Criteria for a workable example

Before committing to an example, it helps to test it against four practical questions. They are advice for choosing well, not formal requirements.

1. Is there enough evidence? The IPD discusses three sources, ideally with different perspectives, and the analysis needs further evidence beyond them. A system launched last month may not yet have any.

2. Are people affected in different ways? Analysis depends on comparing groups: users and non-users, workers and customers, a city government and residents.

3. Is it debated? If everyone agrees the system is simply good or bad, there is little to evaluate. A system with competing claims supports richer evaluation.

4. Is it personally accessible? Projects are often strongest when the student can observe the system directly or speak to people who use it, within the limits of research ethics.

Identifying people and communities

People and communities are the individuals and groups affected by a digital system. They include those who use it, those who build and run it, those affected without choosing to be, and those excluded from it. They often make different claims about the same system. Mapping them early keeps the inquiry focused on human impacts rather than technical features.

For Citi Bike in New York, for instance, the groups include annual members who commute by bike, occasional tourist users, residents of neighbourhoods with few docking stations, the city's transport department, Lyft as operator, and bike couriers who share the same streets. Each group experiences the system differently, and each would describe its impacts differently. Distinguishing between groups directly affected (members, the operator) and those indirectly affected (pedestrians, local shops near docking stations) adds depth to the later analysis.

Writing an inquiry question

The inquiry question turns a topic into an investigation. A strong question is open-ended, worth considering from more than one perspective, and impossible to answer by description alone. It also needs to be narrow enough to answer convincingly in a ten-minute presentation.

Features of a strong question

A useful inquiry question usually:

• names, or clearly points to, the specific real-world example

• asks about impacts or implications for identifiable people and communities

• uses an evaluative framing ("to what extent", "how far", "how effectively", "who benefits") that invites judgement

• can be answered with available evidence

• suggests one or two concepts as a lens (power, identity, change, values and ethics, and so on).

A weak question, by contrast, is closed (answered yes or no), descriptive ("How does X work?"), far too broad ("Is AI good for society?"), or depends on predicting the future without evidence.

Weak and strong questions compared

The same refinement process applies to any topic. One more short illustration shows a refinement from a local system:

1. "How do food-delivery apps affect workers?" (broad, no example)

2. "How does Foodpanda affect riders in Hong Kong?" (specific, but descriptive)

3. "To what extent does Foodpanda's app-based allocation of orders give riders in Hong Kong control over their hours and income?" (specific, evaluative, centred on one group and one feature)

Connecting to concepts, content and contexts

The inquiry focus explains how the question links to the course's three Cs. All three must be addressed, although they need not receive equal weight.

• Content is the digital system itself: which type of technology is involved (data, algorithms, computers, networks, media, artificial intelligence, robots and autonomous technologies) and the relevant details of how it works.

• Concepts (change, expression, identity, power, space, systems, values and ethics) are the lenses that give the inquiry insight. A concept turns a description into an argument: through the concept of power, a bike-sharing scheme becomes a question of who decides where docking stations go.

• Contexts (cultural, economic, environmental, health, human knowledge, political, social) situate the inquiry in an area of life.

The connections should explain, not just list. "Concept: power" earns little; "the concept of power frames the inquiry because the platform's algorithm, not the riders, decides which orders they see" shows why that lens matters for this question.

Planning and documentation

Making a timeline

The project spans many weeks alongside other subjects, so a written plan helps. The course toolkit describes planning as identifying the resources needed (time, people, materials), breaking a long process into smaller tasks, and setting deadlines. Schools set their own internal dates, and the teacher's calendar always takes priority over any generic plan.

As a matter of good practice, a plan works best when it is concrete. "Research" is not a task; "find and annotate one academic or official source on Citi Bike station locations" is. Each task should have an estimated time and a date, and the plan should leave a buffer of a week or more before the internal deadline, because recording and editing a presentation usually takes longer than expected.

Keeping a research journal

A research journal (sometimes called a portfolio or inquiry log) is a running record of the project. It may be a notebook, a shared document or a note-taking app. It has three practical uses: it stops sources and ideas being lost, it makes writing the IPD faster because the source evaluations already exist, and it shows that the work is authentic. Teachers may check planning documents and records of work in progress when they confirm that a project is the student's own.

Useful journal entries include:

• each version of the inquiry question, with the reason it changed

• news articles and sources, with full reference details recorded at the time of reading

• notes on each source's claims, perspective, value and limitations

• mind maps or diagrams connecting stakeholders, impacts and concepts

• notes from teacher and peer feedback, and what was done in response

• records of any interviews or surveys (stored securely, with personal details removed).

Using feedback

Feedback can come from the teacher at each stage, from peers and from self-assessment against the criteria. Its purpose is to identify strengths and weaknesses, refine the approach and decide on next steps. Feedback on a focus is particularly valuable because a small change early (narrowing the example, rewording the question) saves a great deal of work later. The teacher may advise on how to improve but must not edit the draft.

Research ethics

Research ethics are the principles that keep research safe, honest and respectful. Three principles apply throughout the project:

1. Safe and appropriate research. Research should suit the school setting and the student's age. A student should not investigate in ways that create risk, such as contacting strangers online, visiting unsafe places or joining harmful online communities to observe them.

2. Acknowledging others. All ideas, words, data, images and media taken or adapted from others must be cited and referenced. This is both an ethical duty and an academic integrity rule.

3. Handling sensitive topics responsibly. Digital society often involves sensitive subjects: surveillance, discrimination, mental health, violence, extremism. These can be studied, but carefully: with respect for the people involved, without sharing harmful material, and with the teacher's guidance.

Finding diverse sources

A source is any material that provides information or evidence for the inquiry. The explore stage asks for sources that are grounded in the inquiry's concepts, content and contexts, that balance different claims and perspectives, and that support in-depth understanding rather than a quick overview.

Types of source

Sources come in many forms, and a well-researched project usually draws on several:

• news reports from outlets with different perspectives and agendas

• books, academic articles, reports from governments and international organisations

• databases, social media posts, blogs and forum discussions

• images, videos, podcasts and other media

• live experiences such as lectures, workshops and interviews with experts or users.

A primary source is first-hand evidence created at the time or by those directly involved: a company's terms of service, a government's published data, an interview the student carries out, a user's social media post. A secondary source interprets or analyses primary material: a news analysis, an academic study, a documentary. Both are valuable, and a balance of the two often works best.

Balancing perspectives

Balance does not mean equal numbers of "for" and "against" sources. It means including the main groups that make claims about the system. For a project on ShotSpotter in Chicago, a balanced set might include the city's Office of Inspector General report of 2021, which found that about 9% of alerts led to documented evidence of a gun-related offence; material from the company that makes the system, which disputed such findings; and reporting that included the views of residents in the neighbourhoods where sensors were placed.

Searching efficiently

Search engines give the most popular results, not necessarily the most useful. More targeted searches combine the system's name with the type of source wanted ("Citi Bike equity study", "TraceTogether parliament statement"), use the school library's databases for academic articles, and check the websites of regulators, city governments and international organisations directly. Following the references in a good source often leads to two or three more.

Primary research

Primary data collected by the student, such as interviews or a short survey, can make a project distinctive, especially for a local example. It is optional, and a project can reach the top levels without it. When used, it must be done safely and ethically and should answer a clear need: evidence about a local group that no published source covers.

Choosing a method

Research methods fall into three groups. Qualitative methods explore experiences and behaviours in depth through interviews, observation or open questions, and produce themes and quotations (qualitative data). Quantitative methods measure facts across a larger number of people, through closed survey questions, polls or existing statistics, and produce patterns shown in tables and charts (quantitative data). Mixed methods combine the two.

Doing primary research ethically

Primary research involves real people, so the same ethical principles apply with extra force. The following steps are common good practice in school research rather than IB rules, and the school's own policy always comes first.

1. Get approval. Discuss the plan with the teacher before contacting anyone.

2. Ask for informed consent. Explain the purpose, how answers will be used and stored, and that participation is voluntary and can be withdrawn. Many schools also require parental consent for participants under 18.

3. Protect identities. Use anonymization: remove names and identifying details, and report "a Year 12 student" or "a delivery rider with two years' experience" rather than a name.

4. Collect only what is needed. Avoid questions about health, religion, political opinions or other sensitive personal data unless essential and approved.

5. Store data securely and delete it when the project is finished.

6. Stay safe. Interview adults in public or school settings, or by school-approved video call, never alone with strangers.

Common planning problems

Most difficulties later in the project trace back to choices made at the start. The table gathers the most frequent ones.

Checklist

• To do:

  I can outline the three parts of the submission, their limits (1,500 words; 10 minutes) and the 24 marks across criteria A to E.

• To do:

  I know that the project is identical at SL and HL and that appendices are not read.

• To do:

  My real-world example names a specific, existing digital system, a setting and the people and communities affected.

• To do:

  I have listed the groups directly and indirectly affected, including any who are excluded.

• To do:

  My inquiry question is open-ended, evaluative and answerable in ten minutes.

• To do:

  I can explain how my question connects to at least one concept, the relevant content and a context.

• To do:

  I have a timeline with concrete tasks, deadlines and a buffer before the internal deadline.

• To do:

  I keep a research journal with full reference details, source notes and feedback.

• To do:

  My sources represent different perspectives, including independent ones.

• To do:

  Any primary research has been approved, uses informed consent and anonymises participants.

• To do:

  I can explain how the four inquiry stages connect to the criteria.