For the May 2021 examination session, the Individual Oral will not go through the normal moderation process by the IB.  Instead, it will be externally marked by an examiner.  You will need to send the following to the IB through their system IBIS:

1. An audio recording of the IO (not a video recording if you did it remotely).

2. The two extracts for the IO.  We believe this will need to be a one page document and I am planning on scanning my together as a pdf, but that information isn't clear.  In other words, do both extracts have to be uploaded as one document or can you upload two separate documents?  We don't know yet, but I am planning on putting it together as one document. 

3. This year only, you will need to upload what the IB is calling a "teacher marking comments document" for each individual candidate.  In it, you will put the individual marks for each criterion and you will write comments as to why you marked it as such.  It can be a doc, docx, pdf, or rft.  Their example looks a bit like the one below.

I work at a large school with over 300 candidates for the May 2021 examination session.  We normally send off 10 samples for moderation for each course.  Now we are sending over 300 samples for external assessment.  That's a lot of paperwork for our department!

Please note that the deadline is April 20th and you will want to give yourself time to take care of this extra (and it is extra) clerical work on your end.  Of course, your IB Coordinator will most likely have an internal deadline much earlier than that as s/he will want things in order too.  Finally, you can find the document that explains all of this from your IB Coordinator (it was sent to them).  You can also search My IB.  It's titled "Changes to internal assessment for May 2021 DP/CP candidates." 

Good luck to all of you in the May examination session and may your first round of Individual Orals go smoothly!

Best,

Tim