IB DP Sciences IA Studio — Biology, Chemistry, Physics (SL and HL)

A step-by-step helper for the IB DP Sciences internal assessment — Biology, Chemistry and Physics, SL and HL. Choose your science and level when you start. IA Studio takes you from “I have no idea what to investigate” to a complete first draft of your scientific investigation — one small step at a time. You do the experiment, the thinking and the writing; the app asks the right questions, checks your work against the four assessment criteria and keeps you on track with your school’s deadlines.

For students at any school. Built for the current guide (first assessment 2025): four criteria worth 6 marks each — research design, data analysis, conclusion and evaluation — a 3,000-word limit and about 10 hours in total for the whole investigation. Includes 77 investigation ideas that work wherever you live, an engagement journal, an original worked example and email reminders before each deadline.

The 9 steps

1. Choose your investigation — 77 ideas across Biology, Chemistry and Physics that work in any country, with lab, fieldwork, database and simulation options, plus four honest feasibility checks.
2. Research question and background — a research-question builder with live checks (one independent variable, its range and at least 5 values, the dependent variable and how it is measured) and a focused background with sources.
3. Method, controls and safety — controlled variables with how each is kept constant AND checked, pilot trials, equipment precision, repeats, safety, ethics and disposal. Your plan goes to your teacher for approval before you collect data.
4. Collect your data — a trials grid with units and uncertainties in the headers, and checks for missing trials, inconsistent precision and qualitative observations.
5. Process and graph — means with uncertainties, standard deviation, percentage uncertainty, outlier checks, linearising (e.g. T² against L), graphs with error bars, best-fit plus maximum and minimum gradient lines, a result from the gradient with its uncertainty, % difference from an accepted value, t-tests and correlation.
6. Conclusion — guided prompts to answer your question with your numbers, explain the trend with the science, and compare with accepted values (preferably from new sources).
7. Evaluation — weakness → evidence from your data → impact → major or minor → a specific improvement. Vague phrases like “human error” are flagged.
8. Self-check — the four criteria in plain language with an indicative grade (a guide, not a grade) and a word count.
9. Build your report — Word or PDF with your personal code and word count on page 1, no cover page, an anonymity check, references 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 28 February 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 Biology, Chemistry or Physics, SL or HL, and your exam session.
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 plan and gives draft feedback here. No code? Work on your own: set your own deadlines and show your plan 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 investigation for you — it is designed to keep the work genuinely yours, as the IB requires.

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.