Standards based reporting
Standards-based assessment and reporting [SBAR] allows us to better communicate to our students how to improve their overall performance. Instead of grades focusing on tasks (e.g., a Paper 1 or a mock IA), feedback is based on skill-based standards. This page will provide some ideas for organizing your gradebook for SBAR. In addition, I have included some adapted rubrics to help you integrate this more seamlessly into your course.
Standards
The DP Psychology course is based on four assessment standards:
- Conceptual understanding: Demonstrates conceptual understanding relevant to psychology.
- Critical analysis: Applies critical thinking with regard to psychological research and theories
- Research: Investigates psychological questions
- Communication: Applies psychological terminology effectively and develops a coherent line of argument.
Even though this is not how the IB specifically assesses students, I have found that it is a very good framework for providing feedback to students. When looking at the overall work in psychology, I can say to students or their parents that they are showing strong conceptual understanding, but struggling with critical analysis. I give a 1 - 7 grade for each standard. It is not uncommon for students to have feedback that looks like this:
- Conceptual understanding: 6
- Critical analysis: 4
- Research: 5
- Communication: 6
Rather than receiving a grade of "5" which does not really communicate very much to students about their overall performance, standards-based assessment communicates to students their performance on the skills which we are hoping to develop in the course. It also enables them to set their own goals for future academic development.
How to apply these standards in an IB course is explained below.
Applying standards
- Paper 1A: Conceptual understanding
- Paper 1B: Critical analysis
- Paper 1C: Conceptual understanding, critical analysis, communication
- Paper 2A: Research
- Paper 2B: Critical analysis
- Paper 3: Conceptual understanding, research, critical analysis
- Internal assessment: Research
The grade book
How you set up your gradebook depends a lot on your school's rules and the program you use to enter grades.
In my own gradebook, I don’t enter a composite grade. We use Toddle as our Learning Platform. It is not SBA-friendly. Some of my colleagues create two or three summative assessments, each with its own category (e.g., communication, critical analysis), and enter grades for each. I have a rubric that is then scored in the gradebook, giving a score for each strand. You can see those rubrics here.
Paper 1C Standard Based Rubric
Paper 2B Standard Based Rubric
Paper 3 Question 4 Standard Based Rubric
After completing the rubrics, I do not assign a composite mark. As we work through the semester, they will have an overall grade for each of the four standards. I then assign an overall grade, weighing each of the standards equally.