IB DP Maths IA Studio — AA and AI (SL and HL)

A step-by-step helper for the IB DP Mathematics exploration — Analysis and Approaches (AA) and Applications and Interpretation (AI), SL and HL. Choose your course and level when you start. IA Studio guides you from “I have no idea what to write about” to a complete first draft — one small step at a time. You do the thinking and the writing; the app asks the right questions, checks your work against the assessment criteria and keeps you on track with your school’s deadlines.

For students at any school. Includes 163 topic ideas with suggestions for every country, a data-collection kit (consent forms, survey and recording sheet), an engagement journal, an original annotated example exploration and email reminders before each deadline.

The 10 steps

1. Find your topic — a topic matcher and 163 ideas with suggestions for every country, AA and AI topics, plus a feasibility check.
2. Write one clear aim — live checks tell you if your aim is too broad or too vague.
3. Plan your maths — methods that suit your course, hypotheses, a prediction, and a one-page proposal for your teacher to approve.
4. Collect and check your data — outliers, missing values, source and ethics.
5. Do the maths — built-in tools (summary statistics, correlation and regression, Spearman, function models, χ² tests, t-test, normal distribution) and a show-your-working template for calculus and everything else. Each tool has a three-minute “Maths you need” refresher, a check against your GDC and a “So what?” sentence.
6. Graphs — scatter graphs, bar charts, histograms and box plots, each with a title, labelled axes and a purpose.
7. Interpret and 8. Reflect & conclude — guided prompts with checks for vague phrases and calculator notation.
9. Self-check A–E — the criteria in plain language with an indicative mark (a guide, not a grade).
10. Download your draft — Word or PDF, no cover page, with an anonymity check, bibliography and AI-use declaration. Send your first draft to your teacher for the one round of feedback.

How to start

1. Log in (or create a free account) and enrol — one enrolment gives you 12 months of access. Enrolment is free with the code STADIRA100 until 30 April 2027. If your school has a Stadira licence, enter your teacher’s class code in the box on this page instead: you join free.
2. Open the lesson Open IA Studio.
3. Choose AA or AI, SL or HL, and your exam session — the app uses the right guide for you.
4. Choose your country (any of 200) — the studio suggests topics that fit it straight away. If your topic is about another country, choose that too: published sources can come from anywhere, while fieldwork, surveys and interviews stay where you live.
5. Enter your school name. If your teacher gave you a class code, enter it: your teacher then sees your progress, approves your topic and gives draft feedback here. No code? Work on your own: set your own deadlines and show your proposal and draft to your teacher.

Working with your teacher

• Plan approval — your teacher approves your plan before you go further, or sends it back with a note saying what to change.
• One round of draft feedback, as the IB allows — dated and kept with your work so you can come back to it.
• Your school’s dates — schools set their own deadlines at any time of year. Your class dates, and any extension your teacher gives you, show in the studio with email reminders before each one.
• Email updates when your teacher approves your plan, returns it or sends feedback.
• Final version — record the date you handed your work in to your school and confirm that it is your own work, your sources are credited and any AI use is declared. IA Studio does not send work to the IB; your school does that.

Your work is safe

Your work saves to your own account automatically, so you can continue on any device. If your connection drops or you are signed out, nothing is overwritten — the studio tells you and waits. If you work on two devices, it asks which copy to keep. IA Studio never writes your exploration for you — the work you submit must be your own.

AI-free by design. IA Studio never writes or suggests your content — every word is yours. Do your research wherever you like (your library, databases, news websites, interviews). If you use an AI tool outside the studio, record it in the built-in AI-use log; it goes into your work as your AI-use declaration, as the IB requires.

For teachers

Set up a free teacher dashboard at stadira.com/ia-teacher/. Create class codes, see each student’s progress and work so far, approve plans, give draft feedback from your own comment bank, set class deadlines and individual extensions, record final marks and authenticity, and download your class as a CSV file. Students see only their own work; student names are shown only to their own teacher.