DP2 - Interim Reflection Session

Supervisors' Final Steps

Determining Predicted Marks

While the subject-specific rubric should guide your supervision of students' essays, and the feedback you give, IB encourages supervisors not to use the rubrics to determine a predicted mark. For those of you who have been EE examiners in a subject, you obviously have specific training in this regard, so do what you are most comfortable doing 👍

Instead, IB wants us to use the generic A-E grade descriptors that are common across ALL subjects. Those descriptors can be found here.

If you want to double-check things and use the rubric to arrive at a number grade (0-34 points), feel free. The form we submit to IB alongside every EE only includes a predicted letter grade.

Be mindful that the EE is assessed externally, so we are not moderated like we are with the Internal Assessments in our subjects. Being off in your predicted mark will have no effect on students' scores. BUT we still want to be as accurate as possible -- accurate predictions can serve as an indication of our own understanding of the EE and our subject's expectations.

Check for academic honesty issues

In total, there will be three people who look at an EE before it leaves MDID and gets sent to IBIS. Nevertheless, it is important that we all read these essays carefully.

Are there places where you have concerns about the authenticity of the student's work? That should be brought up to the EEC and DPC immediately. Are there places where you're unsure how a student reached a certain conclusion, or why they characterize something in a specific way? That might be good to bring up in the Viva Voce, to get an explanation from them while you look at the essay together.

And I guess most importantly, IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. Please contact the EE&DP coordinators so that the necessary steps can be taken to fix it.

Beyond that, please check that students are citing when necessary and that they are following a recognized citation format consistently. If they aren't, kindly let me know (and, ideally, point it out to the student too) and I can work with them on it. It is a bit much for me to do all of this for every EE, so your attention and assistance is greatly appreciated. I will certainly catch things, but two pairs of eyes are better than one. And, in the end, we'll have a third pair of eyes looking again before the upload.

Supervisor Comments (on the RPPF, found on ManageBac)

From IBO: "The supervisor writes her or his comments after conducting the viva voce with the student.

The comments are summative in nature. They should reflect the whole process and the student comments made in their reflection sessions—initial, interim and final (viva voce).

The examiner will assess the RPPF against criterion E (engagement), but the supervisor should not attempt to do the examiner’s job with her or his comments. The supervisor’s comments should provide supporting evidence and context for what the student has shown on the RPPF."

For samples of supervisor comments, click on this sentence and scroll down to the bottom of the page -- there are four samples.

Quick Guidelines for Supervisor Comments

The supervisor comment should be written in the language of the essay itself (so, Chinese essays have supervisor comments written in Chinese ) Supervisor comments for all other subjects need to be in English.)
Supervisor comments should not include identifying information. Don't include the name of the school, students' names, etc. Just referring to them as "the candidate" or "the student" is fine. It feels awkward, but it's fine.
Resist the urge to focus on an assessment of the essay; the supervisor comments are not a justification of our predicted mark. Instead, they provide context for the work our students did, perhaps shedding light on challenges that are mentioned in the students reflections on the RPPF.
If you took over supervision of an essay in the middle of the process, this is worth mentioning. If a student changed subjects midway through the process, this should be briefly discussed, as well.

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