This year, we as students were given the opportunity to organize the group 4 project. Naturally, being interested in sciences I participated into this and made it as my CAS project. In this project I had to work with a small team of students, but main coordination was with teacher. I was tasked with dividing groups, giving presentations to all groups, help pitch in ideas and coordinate with teachers. The G4P is a mandatory requirement to complete the IB diploma, it combines all the group 4 subjects (Physics, chemistry, Biology, Design-technology, computer sciences, and ESS) togather into one discplience. Each group will have members from the following subjects and will have to come up with a solution to solve a problem they observed during their respective rural immersion trips. Contribution from all the respective subjects will ideally lead a wholesome solutions proposal that can solve the certain problem, keeping aspects like sustainability, cost of implementation and obviously the group 4 disciplines on the board. The final task for our school students was to prepare a proposal presentation and present it in front of our school teachers.

LO1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

To begin with, naturally I was really interested sciences, however coordination with a lot of people was something that I could work upon. Considering this was my CAS project, I was the leader of my group. My leadership skills are good, I can work with team divide tasks, however follow-up on tasks was something that could have been worked upon. Working with other groups and pitching in ideas for the G4P was something that was easy, because since childhood I was into sciences and engineering. So coming up with solutions covering all disciplines was something that wasn’t a big task. However, giving multiple ideas in a short span of time was a bit of a challenge. Overall the areas of growth for me were team coordination and dealing with multiple people at the same time.

LO2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills.

Although I was well versed with using excel sheets and google tools, this was where all my skills came into picture. Somethings like certain shortcuts need to be relearnt, and new skills like organization of content was something that I got better at. Another challenge was time management. The DP programme (especially with my subject selection) is very tiring and challenge in and itself, along IA submission, SA’s coming up and exams around the corner I had to manage my time effectively and ensure that all work is done, and that tasks given to fellow team members was underway. Another skills I developed was how much work to allot to team members, and identifying the strengths of each team member and how roles should be divided accordingly. This CAS project took my leadership skills to another level. Although I did develop this new skill, I learnt it the hard way, as at many times things did not go as planned. Another skill that I developed was patients, while discussing with other groups potential ideas for their respective G4P, a lot of groups did not listen to instructions, and many of them were also interested into this project, and as the co-facilitator for many groups it was my job to make this project interesting for a lot of these groups. This required a lot of planning and patients and many of my ideas did not go to plan. Overall this CAS project taught me a lot of things mainly being coordination and teamwork.

LO3 – Initiate and plan a CAS experience & LO4 – Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience

Since this project was over a span of more than 1 month, initiating a lot of session, discussion among group members. Talking to teacher group facilitators, my supervisors, team members and other students doing their G4P was something that needed to be initiated by me. I also took up session for 5 groups to introduce them to the G4P. A lot of this had to be initiated by me which was something that I had a hard time doing, parallel to my studies but also enjoyed a lot. Follow-up with supervisors and group members had also to be initiated by me. Perseverance and Commitment to this project had to be there by me, so that the requirement for students was met. Overall the my group had worked cumulatively for 10 hours on our individual project, apart from that as a leader for this project I had also invested an extra 6-7 hours on the coordination, allocation of roles and ensuring that proper execution of this was done. Apart from this, I also had pitched in 2-3 groups ideas about their G4P, and helped them building upon their project. This helped me develop my thinking skills, along with meeting the requirements of the project, showcasing perseverance.

LO5 – Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively

The team I worked was amazing, especially the teacher advisors and students collaborating with my on this CAS project. Working as team for this project helped get more things done in a short amount of time. Division of roles also meant that there was less burden upon each team member. Working with the teacher facilitators also helped me quickly find gaps in my plans and leaderships. Working with a team also helped me develop upon my planning and skills along with getting things done on time with adequate quality. Collaborative effort also resulted in wholesome development of all student team members, as all of us were here to learn.

LO6 – Engagement with issues of global significance.

This was an opportunity to work and engage in global issues with large scale significance. Issue like lack of electricity, sustainable farming methods, waste management, affordable housing were some of the issues that people had observed in their respective rural immersion CAS trips and they worked to develop solution on the same. My job as the leader for this whole project was to facilitate other groups and ensure that all groups are working. Because of this, I got an opportunity hear multiple issues and potential solutions that the teams came up with. Pitching in new ideas of such global issues also helped develop my thinking skills and engagement with such issues. Although not directly contributing to implementation these solutions this helped me ponder upon such issues, while also creating awareness of these issues to a certain extent. Such an opportunity encouraged me to do more pondering upon such issues and also encouraged me to implement many facets of potential solutions in real life in the future.

In construction, this project helped me upskill me to a great extent while also helpep me engage in such issue with global significance.

Evidence for my participation:

Evidence of contribution: