Budding Researchers in Action

The IB diploma students undergo an introductory session in research. This is in preparation to the 40 hrs extended essay which they do for their diploma. This year the students were doing a CAS exercise of deworming children in Bombolulu, Mombasa. As part of the preparation for the research, the students were taken through an introductory workshop on research skills. They then had a weekly meeting where we undertook different parts of the research. The students in groups decided to do an impact study on the deworming exercise.

In the deworming exercise, two major activities occur: education and deworming. We have an education session where the children are taught about worms and how to avoid them. There is also the Deworming exercise where the children are given medicine under the watchful eye of a medic.

The impact study covered areas of awareness, repeat visits, outreach and current practice at home. In awareness, the students looked at the sources and level of information about worms by the residents of the village. Repeat visits looked at how many people come back for the deworming exercise (this was the 6th event). The outreach looked at the people coming for the de-worming; what was there integration in relation to gender, age, occupational and place of stay? The current practice theme looked at how they handle themselves hygienically with respect to keeping worms at bay.

The research teams worked in groups and really enjoyed the data collection exercise. I remember meeting Geoffrey and he shared this “Sir, with this data, one can write a whole extended essay”. I meet with an exhausted Yasin who shared “Sir, I thought that research was tough, but I really enjoyed it”. That was in reference to the data collection session. The data collection sessions actively involved all the members. Subsequently, we shall be working on the organization, analysis and discussion. Finally, we shall produce a report on the impact study. This is an approach of the core team working in collaboration between CAS and the Extended Essay.

Our thanks to Antony Gioko, Extended Essay Coordinator for this article…