This guide provides an introduction to Getting Started with ManageBac for the IB Continuum, covering IB DP, MYP and PYP programmes. For schools using ManageBac for the continuum, we also cover a Student's Journey through their life on ManageBac.

A Student's Journey through ManageBac

IB Primary Years

Chloe is 6 years old, and just starting her IB journey.

Her parents help her log into ManageBac to watch the videos that her teacher has uploaded to her First Grade’s Programme of Inquiry Unit Stream so that she can further study at home.

Chloe’s teacher can send her and her parents email notifications each time she wants to send the class a message, post a new task, add grades or comments, or post a new portfolio item.

Her teacher can also schedule online lessons via Zoom when class happens remotely.

In class, Chloe uses the ManageBac app to post new pictures of her work to her Portfolio.

Within the new Portfolios, Chloe and her parents can find several key features including:

• Timeline: This displays a chronological history of all activity across the student portfolio.

• Learning Goals & Reflections: These are aligned across all curriculum programmes allowing students to create SMART goals.

• Comment, Like, Star, & Share: Start discussions with students and parents, improve parental engagement and feedback with Likes, pin an item with the Star feature, and easily share specific items with unique URLs.

• New Resource Types: These include photos, files, notes and a Google Drive integration allowing you to embed Google Docs, Sheets and Slides.

The portfolios are compatible with our app, and can be accessed via QR code or by logging into ManageBac. Chloe’s parents can login to view her portfolio, and leave likes and comments on her work and goals.

Chloe’s teacher Sharon posts some of Chloe’s best artwork, a Save the Bees poster, and she is able to comment with her goals to plant more flowers, drawing connections between her art and the natural world.

IB Middle Years

Chloe is 14 years old, and getting more engaged in her community.

Chloe is learning to make connections beyond the classroom through her volunteer work. She tracks all her Service as Action activities on ManageBac, and is able to easily see which learning outcomes she’s been focusing the most on. 

Her interest in lowering her carbon footprint by eating locally and volunteering in her local community garden for SA leads to her Community Project topic, which she proposes via ManageBac’s Community Project worksheet. She tracks her deadlines and to-dos there, working closely with her advisor. 

Meanwhile, Chloe is learning to take more agency in tracking her assignments and grades.

Her personal dashboard calendar, visible to both her and her parents, pulls directly from the subject classes she is assigned to on ManageBac, and provides an easy way for her to see upcoming events and deadlines. 

She can upload her work directly to her listed tasks on the platform, can see any annotations her teachers may have added to her papers.

Within each class, she can quickly track her academic progress through the MYP criteria with easy-to-read bar graphs at the top of her Tasks page. This gives her a better sense of what her final grades might be, based on her teacher’s best-fit judgment from her trends at the end the term. 

Chloe and her parents are notified via email whenever a new grade is posted by her teachers, allowing her to get quick and clear feedback as she continues her IB journey. 

IB Diploma or Career-Programme

Chloe is 18 years old, and tracking her IB deadlines is more important than ever…

Chloe is taking a full course load, and has identified the subjects she wants to focus on, enrolling in higher level Science, Geography and Business courses. She added her courses via the Plans Worksheet, and the school’s Diploma Coordinator reviews the information before sending it to IBIS with one click. 

Her SA, Community and Personal Projects have well prepared her for tracking her experiences and deadlines for CAS, Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge on ManageBac, as they use the same structure. She selects from the list of preexisting TOK Prescribed Titles to begin her TOK journey.

As graduation approaches, Chloe’s teachers organise all her IAs in her Portfolio.

Every time Chloe uploads a file to a classroom task, it also automatically goes into her Portfolio timeline. Her subject teachers click on the eCoursework button next to the files they want to drag and drop directly from ManageBac into IB eCoursework:

Instead of having to track Chloe down to ensure she’s filled out all the required IB forms, the Portfolio keeps everything organised in one place.

Graduation

Chloe is graduating with a strong IB Continuum education, easily tracked on ManageBac.

She’s headed to university to study Environmental Sustainability and Business. She and her parents can look back through her Historical PYP Portfolio to see where her early interest in nature began.

The strong community network she grew through her Service as Action and CAS served her well, providing plenty of tracked evidence of extracurricular interests in ManageBac, and creating a well rounded university application.

The IB Diploma Higher Level courses she registered for on the platform helped focus and grow her initial interest into a university major.