How to Write a Phase 1 IA

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by Ara Downey

Is your individual assignment due date sneaking up on you? Not to worry, the Jugular is here to help! From start to finish, here’s the general process of writing an IA.

This information is accurate as of Term 1, 2025.

1. Check your grad caps. The information provided to you about the graduate capabilities will contain the assessment criteria. You’ll have three generic capabilities and two focus capabilities, with the latter being particularly important as they essentially set out the expectations for your assignment.

2. Look at the suggested timeline. This generally provides a good outline for the tasks you’ll be expected to do. If you cross-reference this with your grad caps, you’ll have a clear understanding of what you need to include in your assignment.

3. Determine your research question. Your assignment topic will generally give you a jumping-off point, but you may need to narrow it down further. The most important thing here is to make sure your question is adequately specific and can be answered within the word count.

4. Some people will then jump straight into research, while others prefer to write their structure beforehand. Either way, you’ll probably find yourself going between the two a little; the advantage to beginning with research is that your findings will often guide your structure, while the advantage to starting with structure is that this helps give you specificity in your research and ensures you stay on-topic.

5. Whether you do it first or second, make sure your structure distributes your word count reasonably evenly among the key topics — it’s a good idea to refer back to the grad caps and timeline to make sure you’re giving enough weight to each grad cap and including all the points that fall under it. You should then go back to your research question to make sure you’ve set your assignment up in a way that will explicitly answer it. Check you’ve allocated space for your introduction, conclusion, and reflection. Reflections are commonly around ~200-300 words, but it will sometimes be appropriate to go up to 500 words, as long as you’re still able to cover your core topic in enough depth. Remember that your reflection is the main and often sole contribution to the Reflective Practitioner grad cap.

6. Your research will form a reasonably large part of your writing process. Each assignment requires a different level of formality in your search strategy — if you have to submit it as part of your assignment, it’s important that you document it as you go (it’ll save you a lot of time and prevent you from forgetting it). Most senior students have a preferred research database — it’s worth trying out a handful; you’ll get different results from each, and the way in which you search varies from one to another.
   
   When you’re taking notes on your research, make sure you document the source of each finding; it’s a huge hassle to do retroactively. The most popular way to cite is through EndNote, which allows you to record your sources as you go and insert in-text citations directly into Word. If you write in a different program, note which source you’ve used in a comment and then download the document to cite it before you submit.

7. Get writing! Probably pretty self-explanatory. When writing your reflection, make sure you touch on the challenges you faced, what you’ve learned from the process, and what you’re going to work on in your next assignment to improve. It sounds obvious, but the best reflection is one that genuinely reflects, rather than just recounting the events of your writing process.

8. When editing, make sure you check your text against your grad cap criteria, and confirm you’re under the word count (+/-10% in most assignments).

9. Before you submit, do some housekeeping. You’ll be provided with very specific instructions on formatting and submission. Make sure you stick to these; in particular, check that you have (1) the AI declaration on the first page (2) APA7 citations (3) your student number (zID). You should submit your assignment twice: once to Turnitin on Moodle, and once to eMed (found under the ‘Portfolio’ tab in the ‘Submit’ menu in the left sidebar). Both will email you a submission receipt.

Every student and every assignment will have a slightly different process, and that’s okay — this is just a starting point. The more you write, the more comfortable you’ll become with the process. Good luck!

About Post Author

publications@medsoc.org.au

publications@medsoc.org.au

http://jugular.org.au

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