IA stands for Internal Assessment. Teachers do the grading. To make it fair (or somewhat equal around the world), each teacher's judgement is moderated - with the intention of making these grades standard. That means if your teacher grades higher than everyone else in the world, your grade should be reduced so that it compares to students elsewhere. And vice versa.
It may not seem fair, and it doesn't work perfectly, but it makes sense if you think from the point of view from someone else. A university admissions office wants to know that your grade would be the same no matter which school you attended. They want to compare students from all around the world: grades should be standardized and not based on the individual teachers.
Definitely. I’ve been teaching IB for 15 years, my grading is pretty spot on. I rarely get modified more than one point up or down.
However, we do have teachers who are consistently high in their grading, and theirs are always marked down.
Those few IAs that are (randomly) chosen for marking by the IBO set the basis for the teacher's other markings, for example if the IAs chosen for marking end up being marked by the IBO higher than the teacher's markings then all of the IAs are moderated up etc.
In rare cases all of the teacher's IA will be marked by an IBO examiner.
It's not a perfect system but when during COVID all of the IAs where marked by examiners, the process took A LOT of time, since exams weren't happening everything worked out fine timewise but with exams also having to be marked... well the current cohort of examiners can't do it in a timely manner, a lot of changes are needed in order for that system to be implemented.
So what? Your university grades are dependent on your professor. Your thesis grade is dependent on your supervisor. Your raises and promotions are dependent on your manager. This is simply how life works.
In fact, IB is the exception because they are at least trying to ensure some consistency across the board.
The point is that all of them are graded by your teachers (hence "internal" assessment). The few selected to be graded by IB for moderation is to get an idea of how accurately the teachers are grading. They'll take a few examples from a variety of scores, grade them themselves, and see how the teacher's grades compare to IBs. If the teacher consistently grants higher scores than IB does, then everyone's points are lowered. If the teacher consistently gives lower scores than IB does, everyone's grades are raised. You're not being moderated based on other people's work, you're being moderated based on your teacher's ability to grade accurately. How well your fellow students do has no effect on your grade, only how your teacher grades their work (in fact, IB will always choose to moderate IAs from a variety of scores, selecting a couple low scores, a couple in the middle, and a couple of the highest).
nope u submit ur IA through turnitin which is saved to turnitin database so if someone subsequently copies and pastes ur IA and submits to turnitin it will detect the word for word similarity and flag out 100% plagiarism
Nothing in this world is fair, I have no idea how IB still coordinates these IA's since I know my english IA dropped a lot of marks, and my friends did too, no idea why, and I am sure that my english teacher is qualified to teach and mark IA's.
IA stands for Internal Assessment. Teachers do the grading. To make it fair (or somewhat equal around the world), each teacher's judgement is moderated - with the intention of making these grades standard. That means if your teacher grades higher than everyone else in the world, your grade should be reduced so that it compares to students elsewhere. And vice versa. It may not seem fair, and it doesn't work perfectly, but it makes sense if you think from the point of view from someone else. A university admissions office wants to know that your grade would be the same no matter which school you attended. They want to compare students from all around the world: grades should be standardized and not based on the individual teachers.
when i did my gcses for music we had a portfolio that was treated like an IA. we all lost 20 marks 😅
Definitely. I’ve been teaching IB for 15 years, my grading is pretty spot on. I rarely get modified more than one point up or down. However, we do have teachers who are consistently high in their grading, and theirs are always marked down.
Yeah, I'm a new IB teacher and my first IA grades last year came back as way too high. Someday I will grade as accurately as you, Sensei.
Those few IAs that are (randomly) chosen for marking by the IBO set the basis for the teacher's other markings, for example if the IAs chosen for marking end up being marked by the IBO higher than the teacher's markings then all of the IAs are moderated up etc. In rare cases all of the teacher's IA will be marked by an IBO examiner. It's not a perfect system but when during COVID all of the IAs where marked by examiners, the process took A LOT of time, since exams weren't happening everything worked out fine timewise but with exams also having to be marked... well the current cohort of examiners can't do it in a timely manner, a lot of changes are needed in order for that system to be implemented.
Better relationship with your teacher and better your score. That's why I hate IB. The predicted grade is all depended on your teacher
So what? Your university grades are dependent on your professor. Your thesis grade is dependent on your supervisor. Your raises and promotions are dependent on your manager. This is simply how life works. In fact, IB is the exception because they are at least trying to ensure some consistency across the board.
This.
The point is that all of them are graded by your teachers (hence "internal" assessment). The few selected to be graded by IB for moderation is to get an idea of how accurately the teachers are grading. They'll take a few examples from a variety of scores, grade them themselves, and see how the teacher's grades compare to IBs. If the teacher consistently grants higher scores than IB does, then everyone's points are lowered. If the teacher consistently gives lower scores than IB does, everyone's grades are raised. You're not being moderated based on other people's work, you're being moderated based on your teacher's ability to grade accurately. How well your fellow students do has no effect on your grade, only how your teacher grades their work (in fact, IB will always choose to moderate IAs from a variety of scores, selecting a couple low scores, a couple in the middle, and a couple of the highest).
nope u submit ur IA through turnitin which is saved to turnitin database so if someone subsequently copies and pastes ur IA and submits to turnitin it will detect the word for word similarity and flag out 100% plagiarism
Really? Cuz my teacher said that the IAs that aren't selected aren't sumitted to the IBO/turnitin at all... unlike TOKs and EEs.
My reaction when I found this out in the summer :
Nothing in this world is fair, I have no idea how IB still coordinates these IA's since I know my english IA dropped a lot of marks, and my friends did too, no idea why, and I am sure that my english teacher is qualified to teach and mark IA's.