You start surfing. You come up with some broad ideas about possible directions for your paper. A couple of obvious ones emerge and you go with the easiest looking option. You piece together your thesis statement and bibliography and hand your proposal for your teacher's approval. He thinks that the items in the bibliography are a bit shallow and thinks that you need to get more substantial information, but tells you to carry on.
You think about the comment that your teacher made, but really don't care that much about the topic. You continue on the same path, grabbing a few more web-based resources - blog posts, homework help sites, a few more Wikipedia pages - and start writing your paper. There are a number of times when questions strike you about what you are reading, but following up with those questions will just take more time and you don't want to take that time. You skirt the major issues and hope that the teacher doesn't think of these same questions. You reach the required word-count and wrap it up. You feel good about what you've written. Well, you feel you should pass, anyway. You don't even bother proofing. Hand it in and move on.
This is not an unusual scenario. This is not necessarily the approach of one of the top students in the class, but rather a student who doesn't see much relevance in the course or topic within the course. An inquiry project/research essay like this is an opportunity to build that connection, particularly with the students who are less engaged. This scenario misses that opportunity by allowing the student a way through that completely focuses on the product and getting the marks to pass. While more time introducing the topic and building the connections through Immerse and Explore phases may feel like wasting time when there is a lot of content to get through, the connections gained here will have strong ripples through the rest of the course material as relevance is built with the subject area in general.