Latest / IB Unplugged / The Extended Essay & Authenticating Student Thinking w/ Michele Lackovic

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The Extended Essay & Authenticating Student Thinking w/ Michele Lackovic · IB Unplugged

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If you don't know how to evaluate AI outputs,
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they’re no good.
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Hi everybody.
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Welcome to another episode of IB Unplugged.
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Today we're talking with Michele Lackovic.
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You might have heard her name passed around different circles
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about the extended essays. She is highly versed in
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extended essay, has helped out with a lot of the resources
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for the new 2027 guide, and ultimately we got questions.
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We were wondering, how can we actually be great supervisors now,
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when we know the students can generate
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a plausible research question and outline even a full draft in seconds.
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So what can we actually do,
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and how do we stay at the heart of the extended essay?
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And so that's why we wanted to get Michele on the show.
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And that's what we're gonna be talking about today.
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So Michele's been doing this for a long time and has been able to work
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with so many educators across the world,
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during her workshops, and so many students.
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She's been a coordinator and a supervisor for 25 years.
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She teaches IB Lit, TOK, I think she said she's also worked in CAS.
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I think she's done everything the core has to offer, and it really shows
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that she really has a deep understanding of the IB education,
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what students can gain from it,
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and specifically in the extended essay, I think she has a really inspiring
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and motivating way and approach of handling
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the extended essay in the past and the new one coming up now.
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So let's get into the episode and bring in Michele.
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Hi, Michele, welcome to IB Unplugged.
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We're so glad you're here.
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Thank you so much for inviting me.
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Really looking forward to this.
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Absolutely. Yeah, us as well.
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I know we're going to be talking a lot
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about the extended essay and how we kind of approach that now,
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and in this age where we've got different tools.
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But before we do that,
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let's give our listeners a chance to get to know you a little bit.
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We got a couple of warm up questions for you.
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So, I know you've been doing the extended essay for a long time.
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Do you have an EE topic you remember truly loving as a supervisor?
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When I was a very young supervisor decades ago,
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I remember a student who was very STEM oriented
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and tech oriented, and he ended up doing his
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extended essay on William Gibson's
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cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.
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And it was a 1980s, just getting into
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how we get into the plugging in, plugging out,
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kind of pre internet sort of thing.
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And he did a fabulous job.
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And he went on to live and work in the tech world.
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But even years later he said that was one of his favorite
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parts of the IB program.
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And it was one of my favorite
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essays to supervise because he was just so passionate about it.
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Yeah, I love that.
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I've had that experience, too, couple of times, where I've had somebody
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who just does a really cool EE topic and then it like, propels them.
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It's what they end up doing at university or beyond.
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And I'll see him at like homecoming or alumni events and like, hey,
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do you remember doing that EE?
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And I'm like, yes, I do. It was awesome.
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That's good to hear.
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You've also watched both of your children go through the MYP and the DP.
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Is there anything that surprised you or that really changed in your perspective
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when you went from being kind of on the teacher and administrator side,
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to then being on the parent side and wearing that hat?
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Yeah, actually that was interesting.
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So for six years straight, because my children are two years apart,
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I had my own children go through our MYP and DP program
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and I tell parents, as prospective parents,
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when we meet in the big auditorium and they're deciding what program
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they want their children to go into,
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that the great thing about the IB program is that your children
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can have completely different interests, like one of my children went into
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poli sci and business, and the other is studying right now,
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electrical engineering, and the IB program prepared them for both.
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And it was interesting because the personal project
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was a really great primer for the extended essay, and I got to see
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how all of these things sort of combined.
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And it was really interesting because I got to see how like sort of
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CAS works after graduation.
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My daughter works for Teach for America in Boston,
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works for an inner city school teaching there.
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My son, his deep interest
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in high school was history.
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So he did a lot of experiential learning.
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He did his extended essay on history, and then
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he did a special program where he took a veteran up
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to DC on a program called Honor Flight, where he took this
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Vietnam War vet up to,
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actually there's a whole plane of veterans.
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And he was a guardian.
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And what they did was they took them to all the memorials in DC
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and honored them.
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And then he came back.
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And it's interesting, he's electrical engineering student.
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And that actually came up in his internship interview.
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And so he got to connect with one of the interviewers in that way.
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And he said I did that
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and I really liked it, but I didn't realize that it had like
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applications in the real world for other future things.
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And I said, yeah, that's the thing about IB
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is that all of those interests aren't just extra things.
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They're part of developing you as a whole person.
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So that's what I got to see with my own children.
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And it's just been great.
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I see it with other students when they come back and talk to me
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about with your own kids, it's really kind of cool because it's ongoing.
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Michele's observation about the personal project
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highlights the power of continuum wide skill building.
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As Lance King talked about in our episode on approaches to Learning, students
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don't automatically acquire self-management
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or complex research capabilities when they enter the DP.
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When schools explicitly align the MYP personal project frameworks
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with that of the extended essay,
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students can enter year one already equipped with the project management
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habits and making independent research feel like a natural progression
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rather than an overwhelming hurdle and something new.
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This continuum can really help
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our students understand what they're taking from the MYP skills
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and moving into Extended Essay as the next step.
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I love that.
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I love that as much that really focuses in on the core,
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because as a DP coordinator, when I'm doing the induction to the IB program,
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and I'm kind of clarifying with students what it's about, you know,
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I really hype up the core,
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because I think it is a super valuable thing
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and I kind of have this, like critical question like, well,
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if the core is so important, why don't they give it more points?
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But I just love that everything you describe there isn't in points.
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It's so much more valuable. It kind of goes beyond this.
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It goes into, yeah, as you say, careers that they start to see how
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CAS kind of carries on beyond their time that the diploma program has extended
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essay opens all these doors that they wouldn't otherwise see in it.
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I just love that, because too frequently I think people just think, well,
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I just need to know the specific courses, specific subjects,
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I need to go to university and beyond, that, obviously there's really great ways
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to see the core stuff going beyond this in much more meaningful ways.
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Yeah.
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I mean, if you were saying, okay, I want to study electrical engineering,
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what should I do? Oh, a history EE. Perfect.
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It's not the obvious course that I think a lot of other programs
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make you go really narrow, but it does have kind of clear benefits to be able
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to have those different interests and bring them together.
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Yeah, it just sort of came full circle and his interviewer
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had experience with that and it gave them some common ground to talk about.
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And he worked for an energy company
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during the summer, and it’s just,
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things that you don't think that are going to connect
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when you're in high school all of a sudden connect later on.
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And I think
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that's the beauty of the IB program, is that everything is connected.
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And in theory of knowledge, we talk about how coursework
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is all connected through that critical thinking
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and knowledge, and getting back to the extended essay, that's
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why I always encourage students to do something that you really love,
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because that that is going to carry you a lot further.
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And when you're spending nearly 40 hours of your life
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over the course of year one and year two,
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you should be doing something that you care about,
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rather than checking off a box.
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So that's the thing the deep research
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gives you a lot,
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obviously knowledge, but it also gives you a chance to
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explore an avenue that you might not be exploring post-secondary.
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Or it might deepen something you do post-secondary.
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So either way, it's a win.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Well, I mean, Michel, you're obviously an expert IB educator
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and doing this for a long time and especially within the extended essay.
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And let's dive into that. That's what we want to talk about today.
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And obviously there's some changes.
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We got the new extended essay,
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curriculum is coming out with the first assessment 2027.
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And AI has really come on the scene heavily in the last a while.
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And so we really want to get into a couple segments here unpacking this.
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And this first one really looking at kind of supervision,
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the role of supervisor, when we're kind of in this age of like an instant draft.
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So I mean, realistically, a student can produce a research question.
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They can produce an outline using AI.
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What should or what is changing in terms of the role of the supervisor here?
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How do we navigate that space with our students?
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There's always been students who have taken shortcuts, right?
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There's papers that you can buy online.
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There's all sorts of things.
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But you're right, we live in a world now where there is something where,
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I'm just going to just ask for a little help here.
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And then all of a sudden, the question isn't something the student
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did the hard yards to try to figure out, but it's something that was created for them.
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And I think the role of the supervisor isn't so much changing
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as just being a little bit more deliberate with those discussions with students,
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because when I sit down with the students, I say, well, what are you interested in?
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And if they come up with, like , four ready made questions, well,
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why that question?
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And where did that come from?
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And those discussions, if they kind of say, oh yeah,
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then you start to have more discussions and say,
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well let's talk about what you do know.
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And then it becomes interesting and then you can and
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so there is some benefit, I think to brainstorming with AI.
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But I always like to think of it as a do your own thinking first
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and then turn to AI to help refine your ideas.
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Or I like to think about like,
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how many times have we ever had a discussion as a supervisor
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with a student and they come to us with nothing?
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Like absolutely zero and they're like ground zero.
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I don't know what to do.
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So there are some yeah, it's definitely it has
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been my experience at some point.
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But there are some really great visual mapping tools out there.
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One is called Research Rabbit.
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The other is called Connected Papers.
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There's something called Litmaps.
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And what they do is the student will put a URL or their topic in,
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and then they'll get a visual map of all the different papers that are out there.
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And students might need to go to JSTOR, or might need to go through
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their librarian who, by the way, our librarians are our rockstars.
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I know, right? Just life savers.
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Come on.
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If the students aren't
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utilizing their media specialist or their librarians,
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then I think that
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they're missing a part of the EE that can really help them.
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But going through and sitting down and they might look at some,
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bring some of these sources and then that's a great starting point
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for that discussion to happen.
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So I've had, during webinars on AI and education,
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some seasoned educators say, well, if they're getting these
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literature maps
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then they're not doing the research themselves and
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they're not finding sources on their own.
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I'm like, well, that's what supervisors can help them do.
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It's a starting point.
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So rather than an end point, I like to see that maybe
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the resources we have
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through AI are a great starting point
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where those human discussions still happen,
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but they don't happen from ground zero.
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No, as you're saying this, I was reading your Substack article
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about the note cards and that was a good nostalgic
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throwback of like, laying out your essays with the note cards
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and the sources and things like that.
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So I'm wondering if you could talk
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people through your kind of way of
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working with the students as a supervisor, because I think that you did
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some really interesting distinctions about kind of where you give feedback
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and at what stages, and it all feels really intentional.
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So I was wondering if you could kind of walk through that.
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Yeah.
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So, everything that I designed, I kind of think of sort of,
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I’m very R&D in my thinking
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and I do a lot of experimentation with everything.
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Sorry, I don't know what R&D means. What is that?
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Research and development.
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Oh, okay. Thank you.
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Yeah, I'm kind of like,
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I like to throw things around and break them
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and figure out what's going on I mean, even
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when we were reading a play. One of the things that we did was
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we looked at
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allusions in the play and animated them with AI, but
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that was after we did a lot of intentional analysis and so forth.
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So when I sit down with students for the EE and I think about that
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supervisory process, I have more discussions.
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And I think the biggest difference now is my gold
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standard for so many years, because I'm a literature teacher
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by nature, is to write the right kinds of marginal comments,
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not copious notes, but just the right questions at the right time.
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Because we're allowed to give written feedback on one draft.
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And we're allowed to do that all through the IB.
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So, last year when I was doing some theory of knowledge
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work, I did the same thing on like, actually
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I was doing that for the proposal stage and I was going to be out.
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So I wrote like more notes than I normally do.
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And then when their drafts came out, I was like, oh,
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why do these sounds so smooth and not in the students voice?
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And they had taken my comments and uploaded those to a large language model.
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And so I'm like, oh, this is on me.
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I've given them a recipe for how to improve their papers.
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And that's when my gold standard,
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all of a sudden, became sort of obsolete in the age of AI.
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Not that we shouldn't write questions in the margins,
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but my questions now are very brief,
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intentional and to the point.
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And then the further discussion lives in a
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face to face conversations.
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So when the students come and talk to me, I have that back and forth
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and that iterative back and forth is actually become more helpful.
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It's saved me time at home.
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And writing all of this and you can think about it
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if you're doing all the writing in the margins, who's learning,
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you are not the students.
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So I have built in a little bit more time to have those discussions.
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So before I might map out like 15, 20 minutes for a student.
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Now, I'll map out a good 30,
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40 minutes to have that fuller discussion with students.
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And I do that all across the board
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with the HL essay in IB literature with the prescribed titles.
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Yeah. Everything.
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And so people think, well, how do you do this?
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How do you fit in?
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Well literature,
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just small, shorter works or whatnot.
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But with the extended essay, we are supposed to work with the students
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for 3 to 5 hours.
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That's really plenty of time to have those intentional discussions.
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What I love about what you're talking about here, Michel, is
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you could see how having that iterative conversation, that sort of back
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and forth as you just described,
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really helps the student identify their own specific passions
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and then helps them really understand a little bit
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more about drawing that passion out.
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It really does come to the root of the word education to educe.
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Let me pull out the best here because,
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you know, I was laughing when you mentioned
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they kind of come to you with these questions
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they've got like four prepared research questions.
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You're like, where is that from?
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I get all the time with biology because it's just like, oh,
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I really, really am interested
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in this enzyme and how it works and goes, what's that all about?
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But then you get the chance to, like, dive into it in more detail
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and you start to pull out some that works for them.
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And so what I love
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about what you're describing here is just using that conversation
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to help the student deepen what they think and what they're really interested in.
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And I like the cautionary idea of AI and how to be using that.
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I know you've shared some things in a Substack with regard
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to like the guided pathway of AI and how you can use that to have better questions.
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And I guess, as such an experienced educator,
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somebody who's so far into IBEN and workshops and examining
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and that sort of stuff, when you're talking
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with people in these workshops, what do you notice
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most people are really kind of
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getting wrong,
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and what are the easiest wins that we could be doing to make sure
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we get it right?
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Well, I think that most coordinators,
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IB coordinators are exhausted right now.
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Because what happens invariably
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Can you speak to that, John?
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I feel so awake.
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Yeah.
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Because we could talk all day about like,
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what's supposed to happen, these perfect conversations.
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But at the end of the day you might have the handful of students,
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or maybe more than a handful,
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where the voice isn't theirs, the work isn't theirs.
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And then what do you do?
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And then you ask, well, where does it go wrong?
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I think it goes wrong in the policing.
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Because, in my experience, students,
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well, some students cut corners,
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because they just don't want to do the work.
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But when the students cut corners, they cut corners
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when they have four things to do the next day.
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And they only have a certain amount of hours.
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They cut corners when there's no one to ask.
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And it's 11:00 at night.
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They cut corners when they procrastinate.
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Their lives are busy.
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They have a lot of extracurriculars.
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They have a lot of difficult classes.
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So, I think that
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one of the things to do that once something does go wrong
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and you notice that isn't in the student's voice.
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I have students actually jot down some notes
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about their own paper off grid.
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And it's not a test.
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It's just like, well, talk to me about what
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is happening in this paper right now.
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Talk to me about what your main claims are,
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and just write it down for about 15 minutes,
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and then you're going to bring that up to me
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and we'll have a discussion.
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And then I'll look at that next to their draft,
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and if the voice is completely different, or they can't speak to anything
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that's in their paper, that gives me a lot of data.
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We need to rethink
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exactly how we are going to go from here.
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Because I had a student last year and she was doing a paper on dance,
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and she'd been dancing since she was like three.
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She knew everything about it.
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And our early conversations were fantastic.
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And then when she got to the draft stage, I mean, it looked like
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a postgraduate student could have written. I'm like, what happened here?
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And she had some theories that she couldn't speak to.
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And then I'm like, well, you can tell me what this word means.
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She couldn't.
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I'm like, what happened to the notes that we were looking at earlier?
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And she said, oh, well, I didn't feel polished enough or good enough.
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I felt like this would be better to do it this way.
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And I said, no, no, that was better.
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I said, I’ve been scoring
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extended essays for IB for like over a decade.
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You're supposed to sound like a 17 year old.
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You're not supposed to sound,
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you're supposed to be doing the work on your own.
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So I said, what happened to the other draft?
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She goes, I got rid of that.
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I'm like, let's get back to that. Let's toss this.
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And then we took it back.
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And then we had those real conversations.
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And so that's part of my voice protocol.
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And that's a part of an interim reflection where they
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write things down and then clarifying
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conference and then we can't get
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to the evidence of ownership until they have that clarifying conference.
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And then from there
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she had to go back and integrate things she really didn't know about.
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And she wrote a fantastic paper.
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She said it felt like it was choreographing a dance
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when she wrote. And she trusted her voice at that point.
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And it was so edifying for, I think both of us, that she was able to do that.
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And I think where schools get it wrong is they see we need to punish this,
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because the student cheated and they know they cheated,
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and they know they cut the corners and the students know they get do more.
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So when a student has corners, I'm like, let's just talk about this.
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I know what you did. you know what you did.
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And some of them were like, how do that this is AI?
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And so we have detection programs and all of that.
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But some of those detection programs are wrong.
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I had a Venezuelan student who wrote
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in a very patterned way, but she owned every word of that.
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And some of her other teachers were questioning things, but like,
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this was all her.
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She was definitely writing this work, and it was similar work
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that she done for me, and she started to cry, she said.
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I started to doubt that
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anything that I wrote was authentic was going to be called into question.
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So the detection programs can be wrong, and particularly for students
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whose first language is not what they're writing in.
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Right?
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She's writing in English, but her first language isn’t English.
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And so somehow the detection patterns
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come out of false positives
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in a lot of cases like that.
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So in the discussion told me everything I needed to know.
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And then some kids are really good at humanizing their language and so forth
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and passing by the detectors
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and they're super techie, but then they can't speak to their paper.
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And I'm like, well, I can't authenticate something
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you can't speak to.
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So I think the discussions even the playing field,
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because it's not about catching cheaters, it's about authenticating
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real work and that's what we're in the business of, is the learning.
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Yeah.
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It's also about what stage, like by the time
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it gets to one of these authenticating services, it's too late.
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The kids already decided that they needed to take the shortcuts, where
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if you're, and it's just about trying to get away with it or not,
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but having the conversation beforehand is the why.
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It's understanding is it because they're completely overloaded
23:21
and they don't have the time to do it?
23:22
Is it because, I think I've been hearing a lot more of students
23:26
just feeling like there is no way that I could possibly write
23:30
this essay as good as chat, so why would I even bother.
23:34
What's the point,
23:36
If then later on in my career, I'm just going to have to use it
23:39
and blah, blah, blah.
23:40
And so having the conversations about the why
23:43
and then actually seeing the value of the conversations with you,
23:49
I think makes a big difference, because then they see the purpose
23:54
of writing it themselves, as opposed to just getting caught at the end.
23:58
And then I think students are going to be a lot more proud of their own work
24:02
anyway, as opposed to something that they might generate the other way.
24:04
And, actually I was looking at this
24:06
just a little bit ago because we were talking about
24:09
academic integrity and sharing that with students,
24:11
but also our teachers and kind of recognizing
24:13
we've touched on them like the three more often reasons
24:17
that students will choose to be dishonest is they're completely overwhelmed,
24:20
as you said, or they haven't manage their time too well.
24:24
Or maybe as educators,
24:24
we put too many deadlines all in one spot, that sort of thing,
24:28
to they feel like this, I have to,
24:30
this is my only option, I have to be successful,
24:33
and I don't trust my voice.
24:34
Or third, like, it's just kind of,
24:36
it's accepted in the community like,
24:39
nobody really gets called out on this thing,
24:41
So you just kind of do it. It's okay by all the peers.
24:43
But what I'm really impressed with what you spoke to there,
24:46
Michele, is how much it's about drawing out the student voice.
24:49
And obviously when you say that the sort of voice piece,
24:53
I think it's the verbalizing ownership in the continuous exchanges, right? Yes.
24:58
Very good.
24:58
Verbalize ownership and continuous exchange, very good.
25:01
Which is cool. So and this is a cool framework,
25:03
but I actually love the acronym, because what we constantly come down
25:07
to is like, what makes it that a student doesn't want to trust their own voice?
25:11
What makes it where they feel like,
25:13
I have to use this AI because it's better than what I can provide.
25:16
And that to me really dips into kind of an identity piece
25:19
and identity formation of this young person that,
25:22
as you've described, the extended essay can really bring out, like it can help
25:26
to bring out more of the academic in a young person than they thought they had.
25:30
It can bring out more of their passions
25:31
more of their interests than they thought they had.
25:33
So I just love that what you commented on,
25:36
it’s not about policing,
25:38
it's about helping them find their own voice.
25:40
And I just think that's a really powerful message
25:42
that we could take right away from what you're talking about here.
25:45
Well, and I think also, it's not just about because people say, well,
25:50
to get students future ready and the students in the future
25:54
are not going to be using writing in the exact same way as they do right now,
25:59
or they did even 3, 4 or 5 years ago.
26:02
But I still see many things about the EE that make students future ready.
26:08
I follow a lot of people who in the AI world, particularly in the
26:13
post-secondary and a person I follow is Ethan Mollick.
26:18
He's wonderful.
26:21
He runs an AI lab
26:24
at the Wharton School in the US, but he also teaches MBA students.
26:28
And one of the things that you have to do as an MBA student is
26:32
you have to create startups and things like that.
26:35
And something that used to take many months,
26:37
his students were able to do it with AI in four days.
26:41
But, in his article that he wrote earlier this year,
26:46
he called AI a management superpower.
26:50
And he said his students were able to create these startups in four days,
26:54
not because they were good at AI, but because they knew how to scope problems.
26:58
They knew how to think outside the box.
27:00
And they also had expertise in their field.
27:03
So what is the EE do?
27:05
It's a long term project.
27:07
One of the counselors that I talked to
27:11
at global conferences say that
27:14
IB students are sort of set apart because they rarely do
27:17
have students who do such a long term project,
27:22
where they have to
27:23
reach out to supervisors, where they
27:26
have many steps along the way.
27:27
I mean, that's real world project based learning that we do,
27:32
and it's getting them ready to scope problems, figure things out.
27:35
These are all approaches to teaching
27:37
and learning skills, where they have to think, they have to
27:40
collaborate. They have to
27:43
really gain knowledge.
27:45
And if you think about what Ethan Mollick was saying
27:47
also about having expertise, what are they doing
27:50
when they do a deep dive into research, they're gaining that expertise.
27:54
So, if you don't know how to evaluate AI outputs,
28:00
they’re no good.
28:02
One of the most interesting challenges emerging in schools
28:05
is that AI is not simply creating an academic integrity problem.
28:08
It's also creating a confidence problem.
28:11
Research from self-determination theory suggests that students are more motivated
28:15
when they experience competency,
28:17
autonomy, and meaningful ownership over their learning.
28:20
When students begin to believe that an AI system can always write better
28:24
than they can, that sense of competence can be completely undermined.
28:29
Educational researchers have also found that students are more likely to engage
28:32
deeply with challenging work when they believe their ideas matter,
28:36
and when they feel their personal voice is valued.
28:39
If students see themselves primarily as editors of machine generated text,
28:43
rather than thinkers and authors, there's a risk they then disengage
28:47
from the very intellectual work that learning is supposed to develop.
28:51
So what Michele is describing through her supervision model is really
28:54
a process of rebuilding academic confidence.
28:58
The conversation then becomes less about producing polished prose,
29:02
and more about helping students recognize that their perspective, experiences,
29:06
and intellectual curiosity are genuinely valuable.
29:10
So what are we doing with the EE?
29:12
Is it superfluous now to just have it?
29:14
No. Absolutely not.
29:15
We need it now more than ever, because we need students to still develop
29:19
that expertise.
29:20
And this is one project that's able to do it.
29:23
I've heard a lot of people say, oh, we have to have
29:25
everything under supervision.
29:27
We can't have any long projects.
29:29
We have to just whatever they do, they do in class.
29:31
And I'm one of those people who now, like,
29:33
has students take out paper.
29:36
But I still very much
29:38
believe in the extended essay and the process of the extended essay,
29:42
because it helps students gain expertise,
29:45
not just in a field that they already know
29:47
about a little bit from their IB subjects, but it helps them go out on their own.
29:52
And I'm going to tap into Tim's,
29:55
you just had somebody on your show
29:58
about curiosity, and I believe he was a science teacher, right?
30:01
Yeah.
30:02
And he talked about curiosity and how important that is.
30:05
I mean, that is the human side of all of this.
30:08
And I think in all of the AI parts.
30:10
And Clara Hawking talked about human flourishing.
30:13
We can't forget about the human flourishing.
30:16
And I think the EE is one of those places where students get to showcase that,
30:21
in a way that they aren't able to do in the shorter assignments,
30:25
and then the small paper ones and twos, where you're
30:28
just doing something in an hour and 45 minutes.
30:31
When you're spending 40 hours over the course of two contact years,
30:36
you're developing things that are well beyond
30:40
just the scope of this one paper.
30:43
You're developing skills
30:44
that are going to make them future ready for the long haul.
30:49
And these are employable skills.
30:51
So I don't know, I really believe in this.
30:54
And so I think
30:55
I'm pretty excited about the changes in the EE.
30:58
There's a new interdisciplinary pathway.
31:01
I don't know if you're aware of that,
31:03
but we always had the World Studies EE,
31:06
but that was scoped with very specific fields in mind.
31:09
Now, students can,
31:11
I can remember telling a student who loved science fiction,
31:14
and he wanted to write about the science part of science fiction.
31:17
And like, I love that idea, but you can't do it because there's no,
31:20
it doesn't fit the parameters of the literature and science.
31:23
You can't mix those. Well, now you can.
31:25
So IB wasn't trying to torture us, with giving us
31:30
all of this extra flexibility, it was trying to like open pathways
31:34
for students to be able to make these,
31:38
they were already making these connections on their own,
31:41
but now they have permission to actually write an EE on that,
31:43
which I think is really cool.
31:46
What's interesting here
31:47
is that research on AI consistently points to the same conclusion,
31:52
AI works best when it's paired with human expertise.
31:56
Ethan Mollick and others have argued that the people who benefit most from
32:00
AI aren't necessarily those who know the tools best, but those who have enough
32:06
subject knowledge to evaluate what the AI produces.
32:10
That's why projects like the extended essay still matter.
32:13
They're not just teaching students how to write a paper.
32:16
They're teaching students how to think deeply about a problem,
32:19
evaluate evidence, and develop expertise.
32:22
Those are exactly the skills that become more valuable in an AI rich world.
32:27
No, definitely.
32:27
I mean, I think there's so much that the IB's doing right now to,
32:32
kind of, really champion the interdisciplinary learning.
32:35
And I think that the EE is probably not going anywhere.
32:37
And I think that there's a lot of conversations around
32:41
just fears of essay writing.
32:43
And how do I teach students to write essays?
32:47
I can't trust them. Like you said, I can't trust them to do it at home.
32:50
They have to do it in person.
32:51
And I think that you have
32:54
a really great perspective on kind of why it matters, but also how to get
32:59
the students to understand why it matters, and pulling all of that together.
33:03
So no, I think it's great.
33:07
Well, and you were just touching on obviously
33:09
the new EE guide and it's going to be coming out here for 2027.
33:12
And I know that you've contributed to writing some of these and books
33:15
and all this stuff for people as well.
33:19
I know there's a few big structural changes and that sort of stuff
33:22
that are going in there, but I actually want to get into this piece
33:24
you were just talking about with the AI guidance,
33:26
because we know that it's woven throughout the guide, rather than just
33:29
sort of tucked in as like an academic integrity piece at the side.
33:32
Can you talk us through that a little bit more?
33:34
How do we have this sort of AI guidance woven
33:37
in throughout the whole process of the EE, and how can we use that better?
33:40
So it's interesting. The academic integrity guide,
33:44
not simply the EE guide, but the academic Integrity guide,
33:49
was updated in February of 2026.
33:52
And interestingly enough, there was a lot more
33:56
guidance about AI.
34:00
AI is no longer really siloed in appendix six.
34:03
For those of you who've been watching this carefully in early 2023,
34:10
IB basically said, we're not going to ban AI.
34:12
It's the wrong way to deal with innovation.
34:14
So they created a very helpful appendix six, about
34:18
what AI is, the use, the misuse, that sort of thing.
34:22
So what they did later on is,
34:24
and this is a process, I mean, AI changes, the world is changing.
34:28
I mean, not just in education, but AI is changing really,
34:32
in the workplace and in everything.
34:34
So, of course IB is updating.
34:36
They have design principles now.
34:38
They have all sorts of things.
34:40
But in the Academic Integrity Guide, one of the things I thought
34:42
that was interesting is they're being much more deliberate about,
34:48
this does need to be, obviously, your work.
34:51
Things need to be cited.
34:53
But, one thing that I think a lot of people miss
34:57
is when students will point to, or a teacher will point to,
35:01
well, IB says that grammar checkers are fine,
35:04
it's mentioned in appendix six.
35:07
Well, they added one word into this and it says
35:10
non generative grammar checkers are okay.
35:14
So what does that mean?
35:16
Well Grammarly is a generative grammar checker.
35:20
Quillbot, all of those things.
35:22
So, when they added the word non generative, that basically means
35:25
when you're using something that's going to completely change your language,
35:30
then that's not okay.
35:32
So, what do you use instead?
35:34
Well if you go to Word and you just sort of have it
35:37
changing the letter, or it's adding a word in, that's fine.
35:40
But you can't go into Grammarly, because
35:43
those programs have become so
35:46
I don't want to say invasive,
35:47
but it's a lot of people have it on their email now.
35:49
I ended up taking it off my email because I'm like,
35:51
that's not what I want to say at all, you know?
35:54
But it's one thing to use those things for your emails,
35:57
another to use it for your EE, because it literally changes
36:01
the content, because it's changing the words.
36:05
So, what does it mean for AI?
36:08
That's just in terms of the actual ownership.
36:13
In terms of what does it mean along the way?
36:15
I think one of the most underutilized pieces
36:18
in the extended essay is called the RRS.
36:21
It's the research reflection space.
36:24
And that is a place that students can park their ideas.
36:28
It can be digital or non digital.
36:31
If you use one of the platforms
36:33
like ManageBac, or even if you don't,
36:37
you could even just put it on a a Google Doc or something like that.
36:41
But it's a place where students can record all of their information.
36:46
And we tell our students anything that you've done with
36:49
AI throughout your thing, or even anything that you've done
36:53
for your paper, oh, these are really good
36:56
articles that I want to come back to.
36:57
I'm going to just put those in there.
36:59
So it works kind of like the learner portfolio
37:02
in the IB lit class.
37:05
It works like the personal project has a space like,
37:09
similar to that.
37:10
So IB has these spaces that are already set up
37:13
for students to sort of track what they're doing.
37:16
And they're not just authentication tools,
37:21
but they're like living records of what the students processes.
37:26
And I think, when you talk about what does AI use look like
37:30
along the way, some students might not remember three months down the road.
37:33
Oh, I actually queried a chat bot for x, y, z,
37:36
but if they put it in the research reflection space,
37:40
then there is a record of that that the school knows about.
37:45
It can be referred back to if there's ever a question about integrity,
37:49
and it can be cited.
37:51
It’s kind of common sense, right?
37:53
That you just kind of, cite your journey.
37:57
And this is not a new thing.
37:58
How many times have we ever read a paper where it has so many sources in it
38:02
that come from somewhere else? You're like, where's the students voice?
38:05
It just sounds like they've cobbled together a bunch of different scholars,
38:10
and the scholars are over eclipsing the voice of the writer.
38:15
That's been a problem for decades.
38:17
Now we've got AI eclipsing everything.
38:20
But this is not a new problem.
38:21
We just need to get back to that discussion about.
38:24
And that's why one of the reasons why IB has changed,
38:30
or I think IB, I don't even know if this reason,
38:33
but I've noticed that
38:34
the assessment criteria differentiates analysis from evaluation.
38:39
Right? So what is the difference between analysis.
38:42
So criterion C is about that line of inquiry and the analysis.
38:47
So always going back to the research question
38:49
and analyzing along the way.
38:53
But with that evaluative piece in criterion D
38:56
and discussion piece is something you do along the way.
39:00
So you might not be a top researcher
39:03
in biology or whatnot, but
39:06
how you decide to organize your ideas,
39:10
what you are thinking about those ideas,
39:13
how you decide one researcher against another
39:17
and where you land and all of that,
39:19
all of that is very evaluative, and all of that is you.
39:22
And that is where the critical thinking is,
39:25
and that is where research development really comes along.
39:28
So I think, I'm really glad that they separated that,
39:31
because it used to all be in criterion C critical thinking.
39:35
And now that that's divide it out,
39:37
students should really be doing that evaluative part all along the way.
39:40
And that includes evaluating anything that they get
39:44
from an outside source, whether it's a scholar or a chat bot.
39:48
You can easily see where, obviously they made a couple of updates here,
39:51
but as you were talking here, there's like this thread of a lot of stuff
39:54
is still the way that it kind of was, right?
39:57
We're still trying to find evaluation.
39:59
We're still trying to have critical thinking be present.
40:01
We're still trying to have students create their own argument
40:04
and create their own essay and that structure.
40:07
And so, as we think about the new guide here,
40:10
do you have maybe specific supervision habits that you would say, keep these,
40:15
the ones that you've always been doing, keep those, because that's important.
40:18
And then I guess, are there any supervision habits
40:20
that you'd be like, yeah, you can ditch that now.
40:22
Like don't worry about that anymore.
40:24
You know, it's interesting I just,
40:26
rather than keep and ditch, I like to think about tweaking.
40:30
Right?
40:31
That wasn't an option, Michele, come on.
40:36
I'm not about like an either or person.
40:38
So I would definitely keep the discussion pieces going.
40:46
Well let me ask you the question,
40:47
is there something you think should go?
40:50
Because that is interesting to me.
40:54
Is there something that you see?
40:55
Well, just as you've been highlighting here,
40:56
just the amount of policing and the amount of like, let me double
41:00
check this and make sure that said, have you done it correctly,
41:02
you know, it really emphasizes, I think, the wrong thing about the essay.
41:06
Now as a DP coordinator, ultimately, a lot of academic integrity issues
41:10
do end up on my plate, and I do have to turn into a detective
41:13
sometimes, which I'm like,
41:15
I don't remember doing this at university, but I can do it.
41:19
But I think
41:20
ultimately I would say, let's stop paying so much attention
41:25
to let me authenticate, let me authenticate, let me authenticate.
41:28
I'm not saying that's not important. It is important.
41:30
But I think what's of more value is, what you've been saying so far,
41:35
really helping to draw that interest
41:37
in that passion from the student, really trying to get them
41:39
to see that this is a valuable piece of work that they're bringing
41:42
to the table, for all the skills that you just identified.
41:46
And I think it's important to help students recognize, like,
41:47
you're not responsible for bringing new knowledge to the planet right now.
41:51
Like that's a doctoral thesis.
41:53
That's stuffed beyond that, you know?
41:56
Right now I want to see you
41:58
synthesize these ideas, put together an argument, construct stuff.
42:02
You're going to learn some specific skills along the way. That's the point here.
42:05
The point here isn't to have a perfect, polished piece of work.
42:09
And I think, for me personally, that's where I would say
42:12
go that direction,
42:13
ditch a little bit more of the
42:16
let me police every piece of this, and just say, like,
42:19
how am I inspiring this kid with every interaction I have with them?
42:22
Yeah.
42:22
And in terms of the policing, what I tell them is that
42:27
it's part of my job to be able to authenticate work.
42:30
And I can't authenticate work that you can't speak to,
42:34
if you can't explain a concept.
42:36
And I also ask students about their research, because right now
42:40
there's a lot of AI programs that will
42:44
summarize long papers and so forth.
42:47
And so I say, look, it's fine to have
42:50
AI help you sort through and figure out where you want your research to go.
42:54
But once you land on a certain paper, you don't just cherry pick two quotes,
42:59
and that's all you know about that research paper.
43:02
Because I'm going to be asking you about the research.
43:05
Like, so what is this research paper?
43:07
How does it add to your argument or what was the main point of it?
43:11
And if you can't speak to that, you don't own this,
43:14
and I can't sign on the line.
43:16
I'm like, you're tying my hands.
43:17
Help me help you.
43:19
And then they're like, oh, well, that makes sense.
43:24
So, and I said I'd love to be able
43:26
to click the box and authenticate this, but I just can't right now.
43:30
You need to own more of this.
43:32
So I do think that it is a little bit of exhausting right now.
43:36
I will admit that it does take more time,
43:40
but, my relationships with my students are great,
43:45
once we have those honest conversations.
43:48
Very rarely do I have a student who pushes back and says, well, I didn't do this.
43:52
And they're like, okay, okay, okay.
43:54
It sounds like this, because you're making a safe space.
43:56
It sounds like, at least what I'm picking up here,
43:58
is you're not coming at them like,
44:00
I'm here to accuse you or turn you into the authorities.
44:03
It sounds like you're really coming into this and creating a safe space
44:06
for then they feel like, oh, connection is more important
44:09
right now.
44:10
And I think that's a hugely valuable thing.
44:12
Yeah.
44:12
And I am really interested in what they have to say.
44:15
And even if they feel like it's not important, I'm like, well, that,
44:19
and just to try to find a nugget, that actually is interesting,
44:22
let's go down that path.
44:23
And they're all in once you're all in.
44:28
And I've been at schools where
44:31
people are supervising 26 essays.
44:34
That's just so many.
44:37
I know that it’s sometimes impossible to figure out the logistics.
44:43
But if you can get it down to five or fewer,
44:47
then you actually have the time to meet
44:49
with the students and have these conversations.
44:51
And so I think part of it is going to be a retooling,
44:56
on the school's part, to make sure that
45:00
it's actually doable
45:03
for the supervisor and student time wise.
45:06
I've seen really interesting things where that they'll take,
45:10
you know, like, Faraday's or something like that,
45:14
where they just have meetings all day long just for EE students and,
45:18
you know, things like that.
45:19
So I think making sure that you take the time to build in
45:22
the right conversations is really important, too.
45:25
Yeah, I mean, it's not just about having time to talk.
45:28
It's what are you talking about,
45:30
and when are you doing those conversations.
45:32
If it's all kind of back and forth just on paper
45:37
and feedback in the beginning,
45:38
and then you're not having the conversation until later on,
45:41
then you don't have that relationship built up.
45:44
You don't have that conversation of why are we even doing this,
45:48
until they've already done it.
45:51
And so I think that what you're saying here
45:54
about making sure that, from the beginning,
45:56
the relationship’s in place, the trust is there, the intentions of, from you,
46:01
you're not, as John called, just a detective trying to catch them.
46:06
It's like, no, we've both on the same team here.
46:09
We're trying to get to this together.
46:11
I know you use this for these things.
46:14
I know that you can't use it for these things.
46:17
And this is why, and being able to have
46:21
that open dialog, I think is really important.
46:24
And I think that you, before we started recording, started talking about that
46:28
this is something that you really are
46:29
investing in with your classes and making sure that there is this
46:34
human connection in the classroom and building this safe space.
46:37
Now that we are recording,
46:39
could you talk a little bit about that?
46:41
Yeah.
46:41
It's funny, for all my work in AI, I started off this year,
46:45
like, off screens, where we spent the first week or so,
46:50
intentionally building relationships
46:53
without screens, in my literature at my TOK classes,
46:57
where we
46:59
would sit in tables of four, facing each other.
47:03
And so even if they have a Chromebook or something right in front,
47:06
that's still a slight barrier.
47:07
And we would do actual writing and connecting,
47:13
and we would have breakfast days and things like that.
47:16
So, I think creating the conditions for learning
47:20
is just as important as the learning itself.
47:23
And certainly we open up our Chromebooks, we do things like that.
47:26
We make sure that we are part of the digital world,
47:30
because we need to have students be future ready.
47:33
But I think going back to what Clara was saying about human flourishing,
47:37
we need to build that climate first.
47:42
So we create those safe spaces.
47:43
We create that community first.
47:47
And I think as teachers in the secondary realm,
47:51
where we see our students so often throughout the week, we have,
47:56
that’s something really special for us that we are able to connect that.
47:59
And the students in IB are taking all sorts of classes with each other.
48:02
And so it's like, oh, that was happening in history.
48:05
And we have like moments of, sort of, connections.
48:09
So I spent a little bit of time doing that in the beginning.
48:13
And I think it's really important to just, kind of,
48:17
make sure that students have that time to connect with each other.
48:22
Yeah.
48:22
My daughter is almost three now, so it's a little different than the DP.
48:28
But her school we just got out of this.
48:32
They do a research project?
48:34
Yeah, they do extended essays. It's great.
48:37
On Paw Patrol.
48:38
Sweden’s wild. Yeah.
48:41
No. So, we're having this parent meeting yesterday,
48:44
so that’s why it’s on top of mind,
48:45
and they were basically saying
48:46
that they don't, in their three year old's curriculum,
48:50
It's like they don't do anything except for relationship building
48:54
and talking about friendship and all of the like, social skills
48:58
is like the first part of the curriculum, because they believe that nothing else
49:02
can happen until the kids
49:05
feel safe and comfortable and they know who
49:09
their friends are in their class, which is all of them and their teachers.
49:14
And that it's like, no, if the foundation of trust
49:19
isn't there in the classroom, nothing else can happen.
49:21
And I don't think that that part actually changes between preschool and
49:26
16 year olds.
49:27
It's going to change the conversations completely.
49:30
No, I think that's definitely right.
49:32
And I think what you're hitting on here, too, is that if the first time you meet
49:36
your supervisor is like halfway through or something,
49:39
and all it's been is email exchanges, you don't have the connection.
49:43
So I think it's really important in the supervisory process, too,
49:48
because some of the students might not even know their supervisor.
49:51
It might be, a person might be assigned to them.
49:54
Yeah.
49:55
But I also think, if you think of any project management that you do
49:58
later on in life, you have your handful meetings in the beginning
50:02
and then it's fine for them to give me a little drive by email.
50:06
We are talking about my research question, what do you think about this?
50:09
And they just send me a quick email and then I can answer that.
50:12
So once you get that discussion going and that rapport going,
50:18
just like in any long term project management,
50:21
you know, it's not efficient to be able to meet every week.
50:24
Who has time for that?
50:25
But you've got to get that foundation going.
50:28
And then you can do some of the,
50:31
I even have like hallway chats when I'm sitting at my door between hallways.
50:34
Somebody’s like, I have this idea, I'm like, oh, that sounds great.
50:37
Okay, have a good launch.
50:39
Some of these things can work organically.
50:43
It doesn't have to be the three meetings and then you're done.
50:46
You can have these small little,
50:50
moments of connection throughout.
50:52
Michele, what I love about this conversation is it's just really,
50:56
it's inspiring about the extended essay,
50:57
but it's inspiring about just good teaching and
51:00
it's coming in to the point of
51:03
why I think so
51:04
many of us get into education anyway, and why we get to do this thing.
51:07
And that's to work with young people
51:08
and help them flourish and help them grow.
51:10
And so, yeah, I just love that this conversation about the extended essay
51:13
has really struck at the heart of what we do as educators.
51:17
I know obviously the EE has just gone through a new iteration.
51:21
It's going to be changing, and we can assume that it's
51:22
going to continue to change and develop in the years to come.
51:25
What do you hope that a student's extended essay experience
51:28
still feels like in five years, ten years, 15 years, etc.
51:33
regardless of how the tools might be five years, ten years, might keep changing?
51:36
5 years, 10 years, I hope they are still being able to scope problems.
51:40
I think that they are able to do something that they are passionate about,
51:45
that they are able to see this as a deep learning that
51:49
maybe they're a little bit interested in something that happened
51:51
in their history class or literature class.
51:53
Maybe they've been dancing since they were three and want to get back to that,
51:57
that they're still able to explore something,
52:00
whether or not it helps them later on in their career.
52:05
It might come back to them like it did with my son,
52:08
in a different way.
52:09
And I hope it helps them develop
52:12
research skills, that give them that evaluative,
52:16
to give them that deep knowledge and that evaluative piece
52:19
that's going to help them flourish later on,
52:23
in this world of emerging tech, that seems to be changing by the minute.
52:27
So, I hope I still see all of that in 5 to 10 years to come.
52:33
What Michele is
52:34
describing is strongly supported by research on learning.
52:37
Studies have consistently shown that students are more willing
52:40
to take risks, to ask questions, and to persist through challenges
52:44
when they feel psychologically safe and supported by their teacher.
52:48
That's especially important for something like the extended essay, where students
52:51
will inevitably encounter uncertainty, setbacks, and moments of self-doubt.
52:56
The relationship isn't separate from the learning.
52:58
In many ways, it's what makes the learning possible.
53:02
I'll wrap up with one more question, and we talk about what
53:05
you hope for the students.
53:07
But what about for the extended essay coordinators?
53:10
What do you hope that they would do differently
53:12
with the new 2027 changes when they land?
53:16
With the new 2027 changes,
53:19
you know, doing differently is I just think that, like,
53:23
what you were saying the policing, we live in a real world.
53:27
And if a student is going to be turning in something that's not their work,
53:31
we can't sign off on it.
53:33
But then giving them ways to say, how is this going to work.
53:38
Like, rather than yes-no,
53:42
let's talk about that process.
53:44
And everyone has guidance for use and misuse of AI.
53:49
IB came out with this really great document about 13 scenarios
53:54
a few years ago, just making sure that students are aware
53:58
from the get go of what is permissible, not permissible,
54:03
making sure that the research reflection space is really utilized,
54:07
so everyone can point to the same document
54:10
when you're having these conversations.
54:12
So I think more upfront,
54:16
I don't want to say prevention,
54:17
but more upfront knowledge and transparency, I think is going to
54:22
be better for everyone, later down the line.
54:25
Great.
54:26
Thank you so much, Michele.
54:27
This has been so, so great.
54:29
I love talking about extended essays now,
54:31
as of today.
54:34
Yeah.
54:34
And I just wanted to end with
54:36
I completely empathize with all the coordinators
54:39
and the supervisors out there that are doing the hard yards,
54:42
because teaching and learning in the age of AI is difficult.
54:47
It's like the transition is hard.
54:49
I'm sitting there in the classroom,
54:51
I have had to change a lot of things that I do.
54:54
And so this isn't all just like rainbows and puppy dogs.
54:57
This is hard work.
54:59
But I've found that, like, if I just tweak a few things
55:03
and not think of it as having to change everything,
55:06
it becomes a lot more doable.
55:10
And, I would say, any advice that I have
55:14
is just to sort of think of everything in small steps rather than big leaps,
55:18
and to not think you're going to have it all figured out right away,
55:23
because everything is always changing.
55:25
So, just being flexible, I think and balanced,
55:30
as we look forward to this, this new iteration
55:35
for anything, not just the EE, but in all things in teaching and learning.
55:39
Yeah. Thanks, Michel. I'm feeling way more inspired now.
55:42
So appreciate it.
55:43
Thank you so much.
55:46
Right.
55:46
Well, I'm so glad we got Michele on the show.
55:49
This is my first time getting to meet her, really.
55:51
I mean, I had heard of her and some of the work that she's done, but this is,
55:55
you can see why she's such a popular IBEN educator,
55:58
somebody who does workshops and obviously leads a lot of things.
56:00
She just dripping with passion when it comes to
56:02
what to do with the extended essay.
56:04
Yeah, exactly.
56:05
And it's not just the extended essay, which obviously
56:07
that's a huge part of her work, but with Kognity,
56:09
she's been doing a lot of different work on her voice framework,
56:13
which we kind of talked about in the episode.
56:15
And I hate when I just say, like
56:17
AI professional development, because what does that even mean anymore?
56:21
Everything, to some degree is touching AI.
56:23
But I really like her framework,
56:27
because I think that it feels very human, actually.
56:33
And it's like, nope, these are the tools.
56:35
We are not shying away from them.
56:37
But this is our approach that is very human centric,
56:40
between the relationship building and the conversations that you have
56:43
with the kids.
56:44
That was definitely my takeaway, from chatting with her, is just it's
56:47
you have to have the human connection to really pull out the best
56:50
from that individual.
56:51
And I think if you get too caught in to the criteria
56:53
and to cut into the assessment and to cut into
56:57
catching them out for any sort of academic integrity issues, you miss that piece.
57:01
And I think that's my biggest takeaway, is just build the human connection,
57:05
help to draw out whatever is inspiring that young person.
57:09
And I think it's so clear that she's able to do that.
57:11
And so I think she was talking about, which is how to have that continuous
57:15
conversation with students, really, those continuous exchanges.
57:20
I think that's really valuable for, again,
57:22
helping to develop the young person's voice.
57:24
Exactly. And I think that
57:27
with the IB,
57:28
kind of the developments that they're changing
57:30
with the extended essay, with the AI design principles,
57:33
I think that the piece that I really like,
57:37
that we all keep coming back to is the teacher agency piece.
57:40
And I think that it's funny when she said, like,
57:43
I do a lot with AI, but I actually don't use computers sometimes.
57:48
And I'm like, yeah, that's good.
57:50
Like, nobody should find that controversial.
57:55
And I think that that's the whole point, is like
57:58
the teacher knowing when to turn it off and when it's like,
58:02
this is not the right time to have a computer out.
58:05
Like, it doesn't always have to be out.
58:07
And it shouldn't always be out.
58:09
And being able to decide
58:10
where it makes most sense is probably the most important thing.
58:14
I agree, I agree. Yeah, just super valuable,
58:16
very inspirational conversation there with Michele.
58:18
We hope that for each of you, our listeners, that you enjoyed that
58:21
conversation as well.
58:22
And we look forward to seeing you again in another episode of IB Unplugged.
58:27
IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast for IBDP educators,
58:31
helping you teach with more confidence, creativity, and joy.
58:35
Our show is hosted by Courtney Marline and John Patton
58:38
and produced by Katilina Gaffney, edited by Damir Zvekanov,
58:42
and supported by Karla Cetina.
58:44
If you have a topic or question for us to explore, please reach out
58:47
on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
58:50
See you next time.