An ITGS extended essay needs to focus on the social impacts (positive or negative) information technology has on society. The EE also needs to clearly cover the information technology in enough detail to make it clear how it causes the problem. In short, the EE needs to cover all parts of the ITGS triangle.
ITGS EEs should not be primarily focused on how technology works - topics like this might be better suited to Computer Science extended essays. For example, an EE about the best sorting algorithm or a comparison of compression technologies is not suitable as an ITGS EE because it does not focus on social impacts.
Examples of ITGS extended essay topics
All ITGS extended essays needs a topic area and a Research Question (RQ). Teachers can help students select a topic area but students must formulate the Research Question themselves because there are awarded marks for this in criterion A.Business and Employment topic ideas:
- The effectiveness of solutions to prevent online fraud
- The use of employee monitoring technology
- Cost savings of FOSS compared to commercial software
- The use of social networks by small businesses
Education topic ideas:
- The use of computer models to replace science experiments in schools
- The impacts of 1-1 computer programmes in schools
- The use of student information systems to improve teaching and learning
- The privacy impacts of student tracking systems
- Effective solutions to ensure appropriate technology use in a school
Environment topic ideas:
- The use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) when planning construction projects
- The awareness and impact of electronic waste
- The use of virtualisation as a method of reducing server power consumption
Health topic ideas:
- The use of tele-medicine to treat patients in rural areas
- The impacts of implementing electronic health records in a hospital
- The effectiveness of mobile phone technology for distributing health advice and education
- Software and hardware to help disabled users with poor eyesight
Home and Leisure topic ideas:
- The impact of software / music / film piracy
Politics & Government topic ideas
- The impacts of open government sites on service provision
- The use of online technology for election campaigning
The program dossier is an individual piece of work completed during the course. The dossier must address a single problem that can be solved using computer systems and which has an identified end-user. The analysis, design and production of the final system must be well documented.
The emphasis is on the use of a logical approach and analytical thinking, from definition and decomposition of the problem through to its solution by constructing appropriate classes, implementing algorithms and data structures in the Java programming language.