The TOK Presentation is an Internal Assessment. That means TOK teachers will give each student (or each group) a mark for the presentation and will put the mark and comments on the last page of the TK/PPD form. After a school’s marks are submitted TOK markers will re-mark a random batch of a school’s TK/PPD forms. If the scores that the IB markers give aren’t consistent with the teacher’s marks, the cohort’s presentation marks could be moderated up or down.
Except in very rare cases the IB will not see recordings of a presentation. In the vast majority of cases, the TOK markers’ scores are based solely on what they see on the TK/PPD form. It is therefore extremely important to spend as much time as possible filling in the form carefully.
The first page of the TK/PPD form is somewhat like an introduction to your presentation. You make to make things clear to the marker but you want to avoid lengthy description / discussion. The candidate section of the form has a maximum of 500 words. If you can be concise on page 1 you will have more words on page 2.
If you look at sample TOK presentation TK/PPD forms provided by the IB you will see that some students write in complete sentences while others write in point form. Complete sentences can be a bit easier to understand but they do take up extra words. Keep in mind that the IB makes its expectations clear on page 65 of the guide. It states that the TOK presentation TK/PPD form “should be presented in skeleton or bullet point form.”
Look carefully at how sample TK/PPD forms address (or fail to address) the TOK Presentation Assessment Instrument. You need to ensure that your TOK presentation TK/PPD form has clear links to the terms and phrases in the TOK Presentation Assessment Instrument. For example, the 9-10 band states that the presentation has a “investigation of different perspectives” (pg 64). That mean in your TK/PPD form you need to make these different perspectives clear to the marker. Since you only have 500 words for the whole document you will not be able to discuss the different perspectives in depth. You do, however, need to put them into the form and include a brief explanation.
You will also notice on the last page where some teachers make in-depth comments while others are quite brief. Students have no control over what a teacher will write on their comments. However, in the early stages of the TOK presentation process, it is extremely important for students to take teacher feedback seriously. The teacher’s comments on the last page of the TOK presentation TK/PPD form can help to clarify things for the marker. However, the teacher’s comments cannot really “fix” problems that exists in the student section of the TK/PPD form.
The presentation can be done individually, in a pair, or in a group of three. If you are working with someone else you must put your own Candidate personal code on the top of your TK/PPD form but the rest of the form will be the same for everyone in the group. Everyone in a group receives the same mark for their presentation.
Make sure to only use Adobe Reader to fill in the form. There may be problems if you try and use other software programs. If you use another program it may look okay on your screen but there could still be problems when the marker tries to look at during the marking process.