How are you using your IB data?
All the schools that I have worked at where I have taught IB have a time during their back to school inservice or within the first month or so of school, have teachers review and reflect on their student’s exam results. Teachers are generally really curious on how their students performed. So the first look over the data is going line by line to see if their predictions and hopes for their students panned out. But is this the most that can be taken from this data?
The next layer would be to start looking at the course level to see what patterns can be found to help teachers for their current or upcoming cohorts. One way would be to look a summary of the predicted grades (PGs) versus the actual grades. Some questions I ask are:
What percentage of PGs were accurate? What percentage were over predicted and what percentage were under predicted?
If you are seeing wide swings one way or another, or maybe the vast majority of students are either over or under predicted, then maybe the teacher needs some guidance or moderation with their peers on how to calibrate their classroom data. They should reflect on what data goes into their PGs and also how do they summarize/aggregate their data to determine the student’s final predicted grade.
How much moderation was there with the internal assessments (IAs)?
IA scores are tricky and often seem to come down to the opinion of the moderator who gets the sample from the school. But again, if there are wide swings in how the teacher is marking the IAs vs the actual moderated results from the IB, then that might be an opportunity for the teacher to go to an IB training. Even experienced teachers can use refresher training to help calibrate their marking techniques. And the IB training might provide some newer insights on how moderators are trained and what they look for.
How do the components from the different courses compare to each other?
A great way to analyze the component data is to compare the overall course results of Paper 1 to Paper 2 (and Paper 3 or Essays, etc if applicable). Are you seeing one component outperforming the other components? Maybe there needs to be more focus on teaching test taking skills for the format for that component or the content/methodologies used for that component. Again, this would be a great way to partner with peers who teach the same or similar courses in the department or reach out to a sister school nearby to see if collaboration could be done that way.
How does each component result compare to the IA results?
This is a natural extension from the points above. Does there need to be more focus with the IA or more on the content? What is the best use of class time when considering the breakdown of component scores to IA scores.
For example, I taught SL Math courses. Two different exam components were worth 40% each and the IA was worth 20%. Most students had IA scores that were lined up with their overall predicted grade. So while I didn’t want wild swings of scores for their IAs, I knew that generally speaking, the IAs were not that “powerful” when it came to their overall score, unless there was a wild swing up or down. So when I looked at the components versus the IA results, if the IAs weren’t too far off from the components, then I knew that I should focus more on the Paper 1 and Paper 2 content because that would have a bigger bang for the buck.
So the enduring question(s) is…How are IB Coordinators helping teachers understand the exam results in a meaningful and effective way? And, how can teachers use the data given to them to improve their teaching practice?
These questions and pain points can help utilize the data given after the IB results are released to do more than scratch that curiosity itch. They can also help coordinators find areas where PD might be helpful (or necessary). Let’s start making the data easier to understand and actually utilizing it!
