July 2014 examiner newsletter English

Examiner Newsletter July 2014

Note from the editor Many thanks to all examiners and moderators who contributed to the May 2014 session, when we eMarked over a million scripts for the first time and collected over two million raw component marks. It goes without saying that no results could have been issued without your hard work. Over 135,000 IB students will be able to progress with their lives through having a well regarded and widely recognized qualification—either the full Diploma or courses within the Programme.

Some statistics about the session are provided later in the newsletter.

As usual, in our newsletters, there are some interviews with examiners and staff members that I hope you will be interested in reading. One interview, with the Chief Examiner for Global Politics, Max Kirsch, is too long for one edition of the newsletter, so you can read the second half in the January 2015 edition. It was impossible to edit the interview to shorten it as it is wonderfully written and deeply engaging. The second half is something to look forward to in 2015.

Sadly, recent months have seen the deaths of some of our colleagues with long connections to the IB. Obituaries, written by their friends and examiner colleagues, appear at the end of the newsletter. Our thoughts are with their families and friends.

How your feedback shapes eMarking RM Results, the team behind Scoris Assessor, has analysed your survey comments.

Introduction In the summer of 2013, over 4,800 IB examiners marked nearly 950,000 exam scripts using RM’s eMarking software, Scoris Assessor. On the whole, your experiences of using Scoris Assessor have been positive and we provided a graph showing your responses to the 2013 examiner questionnaire in our last newsletter. We have also analysed all the many helpful and considered comments that related specifically to eMarking, which you submitted with your questionnaires (273 pages!) We were pleased that the overall feedback showed another year-on-year improvement in all areas of marker experience, however, there were some really valuable themes that came through and that RM is using to further improve their software.

Using feedback to improve Scoris Assessor The 2013 questionnaire included extensive comments from examiners about eMarking and provided some great feedback on the system, vital to RM’s product developers. As well as reviewing the

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examiner survey, IB colleagues also meet regularly with RM; and during live marking sessions we receive lots of information via the helpdesk.

The key themes that came through from your survey can be summarized as: 

Performance and stability



Usability and functionality

Improving performance and stability Approximately 13% of survey comments mentioned the performance and/or stability of Scoris Assessor. These types of issues often have a number of possible causes and our analysis of the feedback indicates that around 4% of examiners experienced problems directly related to Scoris Assessor, with the other 9% being related to personal computer, router or internet problems.

To improve the experience for the 4% affected by system issues, RM has made the following changes: 

Performance when working with large numbers of items in open and closed worklists, or when working in a large team hierarchy, has been improved.



Questions should now load faster in the “Mark By Question” mode.



Switching between tabs for Mac users has been improved.



Performance of the “Supervision-Marker Seeding Tolerance” report has been improved.



A host of other changes, including changes to system architecture and the way that data is processed have been made that will further improve application stability.

Improvements to usability and functionality We have made several changes to both functionality and the look and feel of the Assessor marking tool; and are planning more for future releases. Roughly 18% of comments in the survey related to usability and functionality so we know this is an important area.

Some changes we have already made under this theme are: 

the magnification tool has been modified to allow zooming into parts of the paper more easily



the “Out of Browser” version now supports the submission of comments in languages other than English



the introduction of a new column in the “Closed Worklist” to improve clarity around the latest submission date for a script.

RM is looking at making further improvements in forthcoming releases, for example, including an option to save your customized screen layout so it automatically loads at logon; as well as collapsible top and side panels so that more of the script fits on the page. eMarking is improving—with your help According to the examiner survey, 85% of markers had a positive eMarking experience last year. A pretty good statistic, but we’re always looking to improve. With the help of your feedback, we’ll keep working with RM to improve and refine the Scoris Assessor software.

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Access and inclusion—an update from Kala Parasuram, IB’s Assessment Access and Inclusion Manager “Inclusion is an ongoing process that aims to increase access and engagement in learning for all students by identifying and removing barriers’’ (Learning diversity in IB programmes, 2010, p 3).

To implement its agenda for inclusive education, in addition to my own role as the Assessment

Access

and

Inclusion

Manager, the IB has appointed Jayne Pletser-Dent as Curriculum Manager for Inclusive Education. Jayne is based in The Hague Global Centre.

For some candidates with challenges, standard assessment conditions may not provide a fair ground for the demonstration of knowledge, skills and abilities. Therefore, inclusive assessment arrangements such as extra time and speech recognition software are authorized for these candidates based on the individual’s needs. Until recently, coordinators in IB World Schools submitted requests for inclusive assessment arrangements using a paper-based system, but this has now been replaced with an online system that is far simpler and enables a more consistent approach to implementing such arrangements.

Another area of emphasis is writing examination questions that are accessible to a diverse candidature. In practice, this means developing tests that are written and formatted in line with the elements and principles of inclusive assessment design. Currently, we are working on an online training module for paper authors on inclusive assessment design. Another similar module for paper authors in the pipeline is on cultural sensitivity and diversity awareness to ensure assessments are accessible to all our students worldwide.

To ensure inclusion through the curriculum, we collaborate with curriculum managers to develop inclusivity in the curriculum guides and publish teaching support material for schools. We also work with professional development to cover inclusion in training workshops.

This year, we commissioned a literature review to study the inclusive educational practices in countries where there are IB World Schools. An important project is in progress to develop a guide to inclusive education designed to serve as a resource for whole school development through a process of inquiry and self-review. A working party of six IB World School educators from different countries, led by Jayne and me, met in The Hague to commence work on the new publication.

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In future, we are interested in conducting research to investigate performance of candidates with learning support requirements and studying candidates’ feedback on the accessibility of the examination.

Inclusion is a journey, but what is important is that we are committed to taking this road and supporting our World Schools as they traverse this important path.

Concept based curricula and assessment In April, Jenny Gillett, Curriculum Manager for DP history, philosophy and theory of knowledge, ran a workshop for IB Assessment staff in Cardiff, on concept based curricula and assessment. The session focused on exploring the challenges and benefits of concept based curricula and assessment, and included discussion of examples of DP courses such as philosophy, global politics and history, which are now taking a more explicitly concept based approach to their course design and assessment tasks.

Concept based or “3D” curricula are based on an interrelationship of concepts, content and skills. The emphasis on this interrelationship is important because it helps to address the concern that concept based curricula focus on concepts at the expense of content, rather than in conjunction with content.

These curriculum models “value a solid base of critical factual knowledge across the disciplines, but they raise the bar for curriculum and instruction by shifting the design focus to the conceptual level of understanding” (Erickson, HL. 2012. Concept-based teaching and learning).

Much of the workshop focused on discussing why teaching through concepts is such a powerful strategy. The group discussed how concepts can help students to build bridges between old knowledge and new knowledge, and can help facilitate the transfer of knowledge to new contexts or across subjects. It was also felt that there is a close connection between a concept based approach and helping students get to the heart of why they are learning a particular unit/option, which can increase student motivation (David Perkins. 2009. Making Learning Whole).

The final part of the workshop focused on looking at examples of DP courses and assessment materials where this concept based approach has been adopted more explicitly. One example discussed was the new history paper 2 format, where the focus will be more explicitly on concepts such as causation and change. In this component, rather than specifying particular wars for study as currently, the new format specifies that students must examine aspects such as the “economic, ideological, political and religious causes” of war, and then leaves the teacher with a free choice of which examples of wars to choose. Examination questions will then, for example, ask students to evaluate the role of ideology in causing two wars they have studied.

There is currently a move toward structuring DP courses through concepts in subjects in the individuals and societies group in the DP—as exemplified by the new global politics course. The revised Middle Years Programme is also a concept based learning framework.

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Interview with Max Kirsch Examiner for Global Politics Biography Max Kirsch is Professor of Anthropology and UNESCO Chair in Human and Cultural Rights at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author or four books and many journal articles, including, In the Wake of the Giant, Queer Theory and Social Change, Rethinking Disney: Private Control, Public Dimensions, and Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena. He is currently working on two monographs, one an analysis of current global effects on our daily lives entitled The Way We Live Now, and the second is an ethnography concerning rapid social change, redevelopment, and internal colonialization in the Florida Everglades.

You hold a UNESCO chair in human rights, and carry out anthropological research in the Florida Everglades. How do these activities relate to your work as an examiner?

At first glance, it might appear as though we are referring to two very different endeavours. But in fact, my role as an anthropologist and a human rights advocate is very closely tied to my position as an examiner, course developer and reviewer for the IB. I do fieldwork in the Everglades, and I have also done fieldwork in Argentina, Japan, Mexico, Tanzania, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In all of my fieldwork, it has been my goal to examine and analyse social change and community access to resources, and how people respond to significant global change. What can one do to advocate for vulnerable populations who may not have the resources to carry out their lifestyles and traditions?

How are power structures or dynamics involved in these issues? My research agenda has always been inter- and multi-disciplinary, expanding the research on social relationships with a focus on comparatively situating global populations in the context of industry, the movements of people and the circuits of culture.

The Agricultural Area of the Florida Everglades (EAA) in particular, is a goldmine of information and an incredible example of how individuals and communities have adapted and survive, albeit sometimes a sad one. Located less than 50 miles from Palm Beach, one of the world’s wealthiest enclaves, the EAA houses some of the poorest and most vulnerable peoples in the USA while surrounded by massive sugar and winter vegetable corporations that operate on a global scale.

There, people create pathways that make it possible for them to survive their circumstances and interact with the world around them. We can learn from an examination of their lives how they experience their daily life and communicate their needs, reacting to the economic, environmental, social and political forces around them. Their lives show us what individuals and groups are capable of and how adaptation is played out in the best and the worst of circumstances.

In my view, being an examiner is a type of fieldwork: it allows for a kind of participant/observation in the learning and assessment process that cannot be gained in any other way. The examining position

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provides a birds-eye view of what our students understand and are learning, and how their perspectives constantly change. For the areas that I examine (anthropology, human rights and global politics), it also provides information and talking points for an ongoing discussion on how we present our diploma courses. Having had experience in institution building and programme development, I am happy to have an avenue to the present and future of disciplines, and the interaction of those disciplines with the students we teach. It is through the courses we offer and the disciplines we engage that we can teach them how to critically think about what is happening on the ground and integrate that knowledge into their own experience. It is our job to follow through with understanding how they are interpreting information about the world around them and how we can best provide the pedagogy that will allow them to express themselves with rigour and knowledge. In a very real way, we act as advocates for our students in the same way that I, as an anthropologist, often act as an advocate for the people I study: my fieldwork in the Everglades has included working with schools and health care organizations, particularly those involved with HIV/AIDS, as this area has had one of the highest infection rates in the world. It is my belief that the learning process includes giving back to those who are providing the information we seek, and we have included that in our engagement activities in the global politics course. It is central to the philosophy of the IB and what we offer our students.

How did you first become involved with the IB? I was looking for some interesting engagement activity that fit with my goals for the UNESCO Chair and where I could use my knowledge of programme development. I came across an advertisement for examiners and responded stating that I would like to apply for the position. I knew about the International Baccalaureate and had been curious about its philosophy and direction. It has been an interesting and rewarding ride.

Why do you think that this is the right time for an IB global politics course?

The answer to this question deserves a book in its own right, but I will try to be brief in articulating the main points concerning why the time is right, if not overdue. The world has witnessed more change in the past 50 years than in all of human history before it. During the beginnings of the industrial revolution, circa 1700, there were approximately 500 million people on Earth; in 2003, there were almost 6.1 billion. Second, industrial growth has taxed the environment heavily, which has traditionally been considered an entity to be tamed, rather than a natural part of our own evolution. What might happen if these changes continue to occur at the same rate? To make matters more serious, there has been no global agreement that there is a problem. Until 2007, it was the position of the United States government that global warming was not taking place. Developing countries argue that it has not been their fault that the world’s population is out of control, and that they have the same right to develop and industrialize that the more capitalist nations have enjoyed. Yet the Tsunami that hit Asia affected most disastrously those living on the coast, the poorest of the local population. The same is true of hurricane Katrina that demolished New Orleans, the drought that has plagued Pakistan, and the desertification that is proceeding without limits in Kenya and Ghana. Lake Aral and Lake Chad are both drying up, as are the lakes that provide drinking water for Atlanta and South Florida in the United © International Baccalaureate Organization 2014 International Baccalaureate® | Baccalauréat International® | Bachillerato Internacional®

States. Again, most scientists agree that these changes are a result of global warming, which many governments are finally declaring a growing crisis.

Global, or globalization, has often had the connotation within both specialized and more public circles, of being a monolithic and homogenous concept. It is conceptualized as a natural process that has integrated the world with winners and losers that correspond to the centres of power and those regions without control over resources. But it is important to remember that global systems are not new, and have existed for centuries through trade and exploratory missions of peoples from every corner of the world. The existence of the Spice Trade or the trading posts of the Silk Road are common examples of how people have long travelled long and afar to interact with other cultures and communities; the city states of the Inca Empire or the Kingdoms of Egypt are other examples of peoples spread over thousands of miles and of regular trade and travel that cover continents and beyond.

What has changed is the speed and space at which these systems operate and in which politics now functions. Our environment no longer resembles what existed in the pre-industrial age; military technology has advanced to where one bomb can instantly vaporize every human on Earth. Too, there are big changes and there are little changes. We can now instantly communicate from one point of the Earth to the other. Wars and disasters are seen by populations in real time rather than days or weeks later. There are no humans on Earth who have not been in contact with other groups and cultures.

These issues now affect our lives on a daily basis. Power is a central concept in the study and analyses of these phenomena as increasingly contested relationships between and among peoples have come to dominate our social organization in an era of growing conflict and crises. Our students need to be prepared for a world that changes constantly and rapidly; they need to be able to engage a world that is neither stagnant nor stable.

All of these changes are represented in global politics. Governments have had to adapt to the changes in worldwide production just as local areas and indigenous peoples have reacted, and often rebelled, against changes occurring from the outside. Climate change has affected all of the populations on Earth, but countries have differed in the way that they have reacted to this environmental danger. At the same time, changes in capital investment have undermined the authority of governments and government policy, while some have claimed that the incorporation of cultures has made the world more diversified rather than more homogenous, an assumption made in many sectors during the past decade.

Our global politics syllabus assumes that politics is now a significant part of complex social organization and that it is almost always integrated on various levels of geographic organization. From the local, to the regional, to national and global, politics affects all facets of geographic space and plays a part in the cycles and changes in geographic organization as rapid change takes place.

Global politics has become a major player in the lives of all of the world’s citizens, as it is constantly

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reorganizing communities, regions and nations. Given these brief points, how could we not offer a course in global politics?

Max answers the following three questions in the next edition.

What makes the global politics course different from others?

What challenges does the global politics course's concept based approach present to teachers and students?

What is the one big thing you want students to take away from studying the global politics course?

New Assessment Division Structure We have revised the structure of the Assessment Team, which is based mainly in Cardiff, UK. A diagram of the new team structure follows.

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The DP Assessment, MYP Assessment and School Delivery teams are responsible collectively for the delivery of each assessment session. As you would expect, about 82% of all our assessment staff work in these three teams. They are led by Richard Penrose, Gareth Hegarty and Catherine Rivers.

The Assessment Design and Innovation team, led by Stephen Miller, manages the transformations we have all been through over the past few years in changing assessment from a predominantly paper-based to an electronic environment. The team liaises between the technical and operational requirements of eMarking, eAssessment and eCoursework and ensures that our systems are well designed and work as they are supposed to.

The Assessment Principles and Practice team is new and is responsible for ensuring that our procedures follow the founding assessment principles for the IB and that they meet the standards of the best assessment practices worldwide. It is led by a new colleague in the IB, Matthew Glanville.

There will be an interview with Matthew in the next Examiner Newsletter.

Interview with Deborah Primrose Biology Examiner How many years have you been an examiner with the IB? I started working for the IB in 1997 setting papers and the following year I started as a Team Leader for standard level paper three.

What attracted you to biology?

I have always been attracted to nature. I remember that when I was very young I would often visit my grandparents in Puerto Victoria, Misiones, Argentina. Their home was in the middle of the jungle. I loved the beautiful rainforest, with a great abundance of flora and fauna, which helped me to get in contact with all types of organisms. I found bird watching and studying different types of butterflies particularly fascinating. I believe this experience is one of many that made me seek a career that was related to the study of organisms.

What are your top three tips for examiners?

My first tip for examiners is to contact your Team Leader as often as needed. We want to mark as fairly as possible, so if we are all tuned in, our marking will be more objective. Sometimes the candidates answer questions with ideas that are not present in the markscheme, but are correct. This is the moment to contact the Team Leader to check whether a mark is given. It is impossible to give all the answers in the markscheme, but we must not penalize candidates that know the answer. Team leaders will contact the Principal Examiner and a decision is made. This makes the process fairer, as then all examiners will give that mark.

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My second tip is to make sure we are rewarding candidates who understand the question rather than simply citing the names of concepts they don’t understand. This is not that easy, as sometimes the markscheme is quite brief. We must make sure the candidate has understood the question and not allocate marks just because the candidate’s written answer contains a number of words that have been learned but not understood.

My last tip is to become familiar with the questions and answers before marking. This will take longer initially, but will save time afterwards.

Where is your favourite place?

If I had to choose, I would say my home in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It has got the most beautiful garden; it is big, full of sunshine and it has lots of trees and flowers I grew from seeds. I like to see the changes it undergoes during the different seasons of the year. I feel peace when I read a book lying under the shade of a tree or watching my daughters play with our puppy.

I must admit that my heart is also in Bogotá, Colombia, where we lived for 6 years. I have made many dear friends from all over the world. The sight of the beautiful green mountains is something I will never forget.

What do you like most about being an examiner for the IB? One of the best parts of working for the IB is the different people I meet. It is fantastic to have friends living in different parts of the world. We share experiences and life stories, which are very enriching. It also helps me to open my mind and to be updated in different topics I would not normally study.

May 2014 statistics Number of:

May 2013

May 2014

Increase

May session schools entering candidates

2,068

2,120

3%

November session schools entering candidates

88

91

3%

Candidates

127,309

135,614

7%

Raw marks required

1,862,247

2,026,034

9%

Grades to be issued

578,692

630,589

9%

Examiners allocated to marking/moderation

7,618

8,032

5%

Candidates’ examination scripts eMarked

941,856

1,028,978

9%

Theory of knowledge essays eMarked

60,487

67,812

12%

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Interview with Gareth Hegarty Head of MYP Assessment How long have you worked with the IB? I have worked for the IB for nine years.

What did you do before the IB? I taught chemistry at a local school in Cardiff before teaching the IB Diploma in Moscow and The Hague. This is where I first encountered the IB and learned how inspiring an IB education can be both for teachers and students. After four years overseas, I then returned to the UK, initially for a year, in order to study for an MA in education but once my MA was completed and my second child was born we chose to stay in the UK. I was very pleased to find employment with the IB so that my connection with the organization and the international teaching community could continue.

What is the biggest challenge of your role?

The implementation of the MYP eAssessment is a massive undertaking. We will deliver 29 onscreen assessments in 2015, all of which are completely new. We bring expertise from our teaching community and work with them and our colleagues from curriculum development in The Hague to construct assessments that demonstrate best MYP practice and are fair and rigorous. The assessments are unique in that they use IT to enable them to be contextually rich and engaging. On top of this we’re planning to trial the ePortfolio subjects. So although the onscreen assessments are the biggest single challenge, producing these in the context of developing the ePortfolios, preparing our IT systems for the new qualification and establishing new assessment processes in parallel is very intense.

What aspect of the new MYP eAssessments most excites you?

It’s the capabilities that IT offers us to assess the kind of knowledge and skills that really matter.

Through the use of multimedia content and a range of response types we can change the way we assess and more effectively assess deep conceptual learning. The assessments are balanced between skills, concepts and knowledge as they reflect the assessment objectives of the MYP subjects but it’s the opportunity we have to assess deep learning enabled by multimedia tools that is most exciting.

What are the most important qualities that everyone in your teams must have?

At the moment they are initiative and flexibility. When a programme is established, like the DP, subject managers are typically meticulous in their planning and know schedules many weeks, months or even years in advance. When establishing a new qualification, roles and responsibilities are more flexible and deadlines can be given at short notice. Each time we plan processes for 2015 and 2016 in detail, we have to return to them later as more detailed information becomes apparent from another © International Baccalaureate Organization 2014 International Baccalaureate® | Baccalauréat International® | Bachillerato Internacional®

side of the project. Workloads are also high because we are still in the process of recruiting staff. I am pleased that my team is made up partly of staff originally from Diploma Programme who are all excited to be part of the MYP and what we think it can achieve.

Of course, I mustn’t forget staff who are managing the June 2014 MYP session as I write. They are very reliable and committed to the delivery of excellent service to schools; I am very grateful to them.

What do you most enjoy doing outside office hours?

I have a young family and so I don’t get much “free” time as such, but I look forward to taking my family, including our two Springer Spaniels, Hector and Horace, away in our campervan on sunny weekends when (or if) we get them. I enjoy cycling and running and occasionally take part in half marathons or cyclosportives around South Wales. I also enjoy playing and singing along to my favourite songs on my guitar.

Thank you to examiners Examiners are indispensible to any assessment system. Without our wonderful teams of examiners in each DP subject, the IB could not provide our students with their much deserved results at the end of each session. We owe each and every examiner a sincere thank you for the considered and expert judgements you make on our students’ work.

However, in every session some examiners do not manage to proceed to marking live scripts as they are unable to mark the qualification scripts within tolerance of the same standard as the Principal Examiner. There can obviously only be one standard of marking, or students’ grades would depend more upon who marked their work than their own abilities and examination performance. Many examiners try again in future sessions and, with the aid of training materials and the encouragement of team leaders, learn to mark to the same standard as the Principal Examiner.

Because some examiners do not proceed to mark scripts in a session, although we recruit more examiners than we need, sometimes we still struggle to mark all of the student work in the very small period of time that we have available to us. In these cases, some experienced and extremely committed examiners come to our rescue and agree to mark well above their set targets to ensure that we can release reliable results on time to our students. The DP Assessment team would like to express its thanks to all our examiners who agree to take on additional marking at short notice and who sometimes mark many more scripts to the same high standards of accuracy as their initial target.

Without the support of examiners willing to mark beyond their initial target, we would not always be able to issue results on time to all students. So thank you to all examiners and an especial thank you to those of you willing to extend your marking targets.

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News in brief MYP examination authors The IB has recently conducted a large scale review of the IB Middle Years Programme. The IB will now be offering innovative onscreen assessments as part of the assessment model for this programme. We are currently looking to recruit examination authors for a variety of different subjects.

If you have experience teaching and/or assessing students aged 14–16, have an interest in the creative use of IT in teaching and learning or concept based assessment and would be interested in joining the authoring team please contact examrecruit@ibo.org.

The first session for scanning scripts in the US Over 500,000 examination scripts were scanned in the US scanning centre in Indianapolis this session, benefitting all North American schools with reduced postage and courier costs and allowing scripts to arrive at the scanning centre more promptly. In previous sessions, a single scanning centre in the UK was used for all scripts, but we are now looking to offer US based scanning to all schools in the region and considering opening scanning centres in other parts of the world.

Are we right every time?—A review of quality of marking It is a principle of IB assessment, and exam boards across the world, that the mark which the student receives should be a true reflection of how well they did in their examinations. While we have a process for appeals, in an ideal world we want assessment results to be right first time.

In April, the English Regulator (Ofqual) published the evidence and findings of its review of marking quality. While it focused on those awarding bodies operating in England (including the IB) many of the findings can be generalized beyond the UK. The report is positive about the quality of examiners, stating that “Examiners are skilled and highly qualified—almost all have significant subject expertise and are experienced teachers, many with senior roles. They are confident, positive and are monitored increasingly responsively by exam boards”.

The report also highlights some areas for improvement: “However, a significant weakness of the system is the lack of agreed metrics available to measure marking reliability (as opposed to qualification reliability) more specifically. We cannot currently compare the quality of marking of qualifications and subjects between exam boards”.

The report sets out six next steps which Ofqual is intending to take action on. Amongst these are to redesign the English inquiries about results process and to lead on a programme of research to understand what makes a good mark scheme for students at all ability levels.

The report can be found at http://ofqual.gov.uk/news/report-calls-better-examinations-markingsystem/. The supporting document towards the bottom of the page may be particularly interesting as it © International Baccalaureate Organization 2014 International Baccalaureate® | Baccalauréat International® | Bachillerato Internacional®

provides the detailed research which informed their review including surveys of examiners and teachers.

We have read the report with interest. While the Diploma Programme is delivered in UK schools, it is an international qualification and has many differences to the UK’s A levels and GCSEs. In IB Assessment, we will continue to look at all the available evidence to ensure that our assessments meet the best assessment practices world-wide.

Last Words Remembering Arden Zipp The IB and chemistry in particular, has lost one of its great influences with the death of Arden Zipp last December (2013) after a long, courageously-fought battle with melanoma.

After graduating from Colgate University, NY and earning a PhD from Pennsylvania, Arden taught chemistry for 43 years, first at Madison, NJ and for the last 41 at SUNY Cortland. A distinguished man and a leader in his field, Arden was influential in many areas of North American chemistry, including chairing the Advanced Placement Chemistry Test Committee and the American Chemical Society Olympiad Committee.

Arden was one of the first United States academics to embrace the IB programme in North America through his contributions at workshops, his involvement in curriculum design and examination assessment. In the 1980s, Arden worked on the Applied Chemistry Programme and was later Chief Examiner for many years. When that programme was subsumed into chemistry in 1996, he became Chief Examiner for Chemistry. Even the new chemistry programme, for first teaching in September 2014, still owes much to Arden as it was he who originally proposed the eleven core topics; these have stood the test of time with little change.

I had the good fortune to work with Arden on a couple of occasions but, over the years, he worked with many Subject Managers, Chief Examiners, examiners and Workshop Leaders. They attest to the collegial, professional and balanced approach he brought to meetings and the care he would take to ensure that everyone was at ease. Many colleagues, both examiners and those who attended his workshops, remember with affection Arden’s enthusiasm and dedication to chemistry and the IB programme. Passionate about chemistry, he was by nature gentle and encouraging. He always argued his case without upsetting those with whom he disagreed and was a master at diffusing potentially difficult situations.

The IB owes a great debt of gratitude to our many examiners who, like Arden, have made a massive personal contribution not only to the design of our curricula but also to maintaining standards and fairness. He will be greatly missed by his family, and by his friends and colleagues both in University faculties and in the IB community. © International Baccalaureate Organization 2014 International Baccalaureate® | Baccalauréat International® | Bachillerato Internacional®

Robert Tims—Chief Examiner for chemistry In memory of Silvina Echeverria Last November, the IB community was deeply saddened by the loss of examiner Silvina Echeverria. Silvina joined the IB in 1999 as an examiner for Spanish literature and Spanish ab initio. She was an IB teacher in Rosario, Argentina and her love for language and literature led her to the study a Masters in the field at the University of Rosario.

Her enthusiasm and commitment to the IB was exceptional and she soon became a highly regarded professional within her subject area.

By 2009, she had become Chief Examiner for Spanish ab initio.

Through the years, she took on various roles at the IB, including those of examination author, standardizer, Workshop Leader and she was also a wonderful mentor for new examiners who joined her team every year.

During her time working with the IB, Silvina was renowned for her passion and dedication to the IB mission, sometimes going to extra lengths to fulfill her role even when this required exceptional efforts on her part.

After so many years working for the organization, Silvina became a trusted colleague, a supportive mentor and a friend within the IB community.

Our thoughts and prayers are with her family, she will be deeply missed.

Elena Gandolla—Subject Manager

Remembering Chris It was with enormous shock that we learned that our dear colleague Chris Mannix passed away on Friday, 25 April, while visiting his family in Australia. Working for the IB for nearly ten years, Chris was an inspiration and driving force behind many developments in our organization. In all his work, Chris was driven by his commitment to providing life chances for young people all over the world; his passion lay especially in providing opportunities for students in challenging circumstances. In his time at the IB, Chris created deep and lasting friendships across the offices and across departments. People will remember him as a warm and kind person with a generous heart and a deep love for life in all its complexities.

Chris will be deeply missed.

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