CAS & Service as Action: Interviews

There is a minimum of three scheduled interviews during the 18 months of the CAS programme. Ideally, the first interview is scheduled during the very early stages of Grade 11. Prior to this interview students should have, attended a CAS orientation which includes an understanding of the learning outcomes, completed their Personal Profile and have begun developing their portfolio on Managebac. 

The purpose of the first interview is to: 

• gauge the student’s understanding of CAS 
• find out the interests of the student 
• discuss the student’s plans for CAS experiences 
• review the learning outcomes of CAS, ensuring his or her understanding and seeing how the student might achieve these outcomes 
• ensure the student is aware of ways to gather evidence of CAS. 

Understanding: Students need to have a firm understanding of the CAS programme and the many opportunities available.  

Questions to ask 

• Do you have any questions or concerns about CAS? 
• Which aspect of the programme excites you the most? Which aspect seems most challenging? 
• What do you most hope to achieve from CAS? 
• How do you think your CAS programme will enable you to grow? How do these areas of growth apply to the attributes of the IB learner profile? 
• What have you learned about the CAS stages, and how can the stages help you in CAS? 
• How will you plan for an equal distribution of CAS strands across your CAS experiences? 
• What organizational and time-management strategies do you have in place to ensure that CAS remains an ongoing focus of your IB journey? 

Student interests: Ensuring that students have identified areas of interest is important for determining CAS experiences. The questions below may assist the student in identifying their interests, which leads to knowing what they would like to do for CAS. 

Questions to ask 

• What are your main interests? How can you incorporate these interests into your CAS programme? 
• What do you enjoy doing after school? Could this be part of any CAS experience? 
• What are your personal goals? How could they be achieved through CAS? 
• What do you expect to gain from CAS? What do you hope to accomplish? 
• How can you advance your skills and talents through CAS? 
• What school, community or other groups or teams are you already involved in? 
• Have you had any previous experiences that you would view as CAS? 
• How could something you do currently (for example, swimming) be made into a CAS experience with new opportunities to add skills and meet challenges? 
• What do you think your role could be in effecting change for the better? 
• What issues of local significance concern you most? How could you address these in your CAS programme? 
• How do these local issues also have global significance? 

Plans for CAS: Students may arrive at their first interview with different levels of preparation regarding their plans. Preparation of an outline of the CAS programme may be done ahead of the interview, or the first interview may be used to help create a basic outline, mind map or plan. 

Questions to ask 

• What would you enjoy doing for creativity? Activity? Service? 
• Have you made any plans for creativity? Activity? Service? For each, what are you hoping to learn or do you have skills you want to develop? 
• Have you researched any groups that you could become involved in for any of the CAS strands? What are you doing to expand your options? 
• What ideas do you have for a CAS project? Are these ideas worth developing for a month or more? What additional ideas do you have or backup plans if this is not viable? 
• Who will you work with for your CAS project? 

CAS learning outcomes: Review the learning outcomes and ensure that students understand each one.  

Questions to ask 

• How would you summarize these learning outcomes? 
• Can you summarize each of these learning outcomes in your own words? 
• From the plans you already have, do you see any opportunities that may be helpful in meeting these learning outcomes? 
• What learning outcome appears as something you will easily do? 
• What learning outcome might present a significant challenge? 
• What learning outcome might you address in the first six months of your CAS programme? 

Evidence of CAS: Part of the students’ responsibility is to provide evidence that they have met the CAS learning outcomes through their accumulated experiences, have balanced their time in creativity, activity and service and have completed at least one project. Students should consider, “How will I provide this evidence?” This is important to discuss during the first interview. 

Questions to ask 

• Have you thought of how you will keep evidence (and the types of evidence) that you are engaging with CAS and are meeting the CAS outcomes? 
• How often do you plan to use your CAS portfolio? 
• How will you reflect on your CAS experiences? Are there any preferred ways you like to reflect? (Note: The student may require suggestions or examples to develop a more diverse approach to reflection.) 
• How can you keep track of your plans and meeting the learning outcomes through your portfolio? 

The second CAS interview offers an opportunity to find out whether students perceive CAS as enjoyable and as an opportunity to grow, expand and participate in a variety of worthwhile experiences. Further, it may be used to verify that the students understand CAS requirements, such as having a balanced commitment to the three strands of creativity, activity and service, and have carefully considered how they will achieve the CAS learning outcomes. The students can confirm progress with the CAS project, whether it is under way or will soon be started, and describe their personal involvement, roles and responsibilities in this project. 

This interview is also a good time to review evidence of the students’ CAS programme as recorded in their portfolios. The CAS Advisor/Mentor also provides general feedback on selected reflections and how the students' experiences relate to the learning outcomes. 

The purpose of the second interview is to: 

• discuss advancements in the student’s engagement with CAS 
• provide oversight regarding the student’s progress towards fulfilling CAS requirements 
• discuss collection of CAS evidence 
• provide the opportunity for the student to reflect verbally on his or her CAS involvement. 

General advancements: This interview is the opportunity to remember that CAS is meant to be enjoyable and beneficial to the students and others with whom they are engaging. For the mentors it’s time to clarify misunderstandings and provide examples of CAS experiences. Be sure to reference the CAS stages to reinforce understanding and application during the students' continuing CAS experiences and CAS project. As always, the interview allows for general feedback on CAS efforts and participation. 

Questions to ask 

• What has been most enjoyable and beneficial for you thus far in CAS? 
• What has been a highlight of creativity? Activity? Service? 
• What do you hope to achieve most from CAS? How can you do this? 
• When have you investigated, prepared and taken action so far in creativity, activity and/or service, or with your CAS project? 
• What have you developed for your CAS project—your goals, who are you collaborating with, whether the project involves creativity, activity and/or service, your roles and responsibilities, and your progress to date? 

CAS programme: Students by now fully understand their responsibility towards completing CAS, so specific aspects can be reviewed. If an area appears most challenging, support can be discussed to move the student forward. 

Questions to ask 

• What have been the biggest challenges for your CAS involvement, and how have you overcome them? 
• What difficulty has been hardest to overcome? Where might you need support at this time? 
• Have you ensured an equal balance across the three CAS strands? If not, how will you rectify this? 

Evidence of CAS: Students need to be engaged in CAS for a period of at least 18 months from the start of the DP. Apart from verbal discussions, students are responsible for showing evidence of their participation in CAS through their CAS portfolio. Evidence can take many forms including, but not limited to, reflections and other forms of documentation such as photos, files, planning documents, emails, meeting minutes, certificates, videos, art, music and journals. 

Questions to ask 

• What have you learned from your involvement in CAS? 
• How have you used reflection to gain insights or understandings? 
• In what ways have you especially enjoyed and learned from reflecting? 
• Do some of your reflections include the four elements—what happened, how you feel, ideas and questions? 
• Can you describe a situation where reflection happened very naturally and easily? Did you have a guided reflection opportunity that was helpful? 
• Does your collected CAS evidence show ongoing CAS involvement? Are there ways in which this could improve? 
• In what ways have your CAS experiences, including your project, assisted you in achieving one or more learning outcome? 

Verbal reflection: Ensure time for a verbal interchange that allows the student to reflect on what has occurred and what has been accomplished.  

Discussion prompts 

• Outline a skill that you have strengthened or developed from engaging in a CAS experience. 
• Explain something that has happened in CAS that provoked some strong emotions (“I was really excited when …”; “I was sad when …”; “I was really happy when …”). 
• Choose a learning outcome and discuss your evidence of achieving it, and what stands out as most significant and memorable. 
• Five years from now, describe what is likely to stand out as a highlight from CAS. 

The summative interview for CAS is best scheduled near the end of the DP. The emphasis for this interview is for students to outline how they have achieved the CAS learning outcomes in addition to discussing their overall CAS programme. Moreover, the students can be guided to reflect on personal growth from multiple perspectives including enjoyment, personal awareness and development, achievements and challenges, larger understandings about the world around them, and how this experience might impact future choices and actions. This can lead to self-evaluation regarding what has been beneficial that may truly lead to lifelong integration of creativity, activity and service. 

Questions to ask yourself to prepare

Overall Program: 

• What did you most enjoy about CAS? 
• Did you manage to reach your goals? 
• What was your greatest challenge in CAS? How did you overcome this? 
• What have you achieved through CAS? 
• What have you learned about balancing your time with your choices and commitments? 
• How did knowing the CAS stages assist you? Where else can you apply these CAS stages in future learning or in life in general? 
• How do you already apply what you have learned from CAS in your daily life? How can this continue as you make future choices? 
• Looking ahead, have any new goals emanated from your CAS programme? 
• How did you integrate the three CAS strands in your overall programme? 
• Describe your CAS project: how you planned, who collaborated, your roles and responsibilities and the results of your collaboration. How were your expectations met or exceeded? 
• What could be improved about the way CAS is organized in school? 
• What advice do you have for upcoming CAS students regarding making CAS enjoyable, sustained over time and meaningful? 
• Five years from now, what will you remember most about your CAS programme? 

Evidence and Reflection: 

• What has the role of reflection been in your whole CAS programme? Describe any way your experience with reflection has been helpful and memorable. 
• How could you use something similar to a CAS portfolio in future endeavors? 
• In what ways has the process of reflection and collecting evidence of your CAS experiences helped you develop the attributes of the IB learner profile? What would you do differently? 

CAS learning outcomes:

• How did you improve and develop your planning skills? 
• What did you learn about yourself and others? 
• What have you learned through working in collaboration with others? 
• What abilities and skills did you develop most significantly in CAS? 
• Did CAS help you to consider issues of global importance? How? 
• Which learning outcome did you find most easy to achieve? Most difficult to achieve? 
• What qualities did you discover and develop? What areas for growth were evident? 
• What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?