The student is required to extract and explore a knowledge question from a substantive real-life situation. For this reason, it is wise that students avoid real-life situations that need a great deal of explanation from outside sources before the extracted knowledge question can be understood in context.

The diagram indicates that a successful presentation will have several dimensions.

• The two levels in the diagram represent the students’ experiences in the TOK course (lower level) and in the world beyond it (upper level). The connections between the levels demonstrate the relevance of TOK to life beyond the TOK classroom.
• At the “real-world” level, there is the real-life situation from which a knowledge question must be extracted.
• This knowledge question, residing in the “TOK world”, must be developed using ideas and concepts from the TOK course, and in this progression it is likely that other related knowledge questions will be identified and will play a part in taking the argument forward.
• The product of this reflection can be applied back (during and/or after the development) to the real-life situation at the “real-world” level.
• In addition, the presentation should ideally aim to show how the process of application extends beyond the original situation to other real-life situations, thus demonstrating why the presentation is important and relevant in a wider sense.

Presentations may take many forms, such as lectures, interviews or debates. Students may use multimedia, costumes, or props to support their presentations. However, under no circumstances should the presentation be simply an essay read aloud to the class. While pre-recorded inserts within a presentation are permissible, the presentation itself must be a live experience and not a recording of the presentation.

If students incorporate the thoughts and ideas of others into the presentation, this must be acknowledged.

Before the presentation, the individual or group must give the teacher a copy of the presentation planning document. This is part of the assessment procedure (see below). The document is not to be handed out to the audience.

The role of the teacher

In relation to the presentation, the teacher has three principal responsibilities:

• to encourage and support the student(s) in the preparation of the presentation
• to provide guidance on presentation skills
• to assess the presentation using the presentation assessment instrument.

These responsibilities should be met through the following interactions.

• The student(s) should bring to an initial meeting with the teacher ideas for the selection of a real-life situation and the formulation of a knowledge question. The teacher should advise, but the final decisions belong with the student(s). The eventual success of this process will depend on a consideration of how the presentation will develop, so a second planning meeting is permitted, if required. Often a variety of appropriate knowledge questions can be identified in the kind of real-life situations most students will want to discuss. Teachers should help them concentrate their efforts on a clearly formulated one.
• A final meeting between student(s) and teacher can take place several days before the presentation, in which the final structure of the presentation can be discussed. The presentation is intended as a positive learning experience for the audience, and therefore it is important that the quality of the product is monitored at this stage.

Each real-life situation and knowledge question should be treated only once in a particular teaching group.

In summary, the teacher should give the presenter(s) every opportunity to construct a presentation that will advance the aims of the TOK course for the class as a whole. The teacher may support students by guiding them towards suitable approaches but should not do their work for them.

The date when each presentation is to take place should be given to students well in advance, to allow sufficient time for preparation of material.

Presentation duration

Approximately 10 minutes per presenter should be allowed, up to a maximum of approximately 30 minutes per group. Presentations should be scheduled to allow time for class discussion afterwards.

Interaction and audience participation are allowed during the presentation, not just in follow-up discussion, but there must be an identifiable substantial input from the presenter(s) that is assessable.

Internal assessment documentation

Presentation planning and marking document (TK/PPD)

Each student must complete and submit a presentation planning and marking document (TK/PPD).

The procedure is as follows.

• The student will complete the student sections of the TK/PPD form.
• The student will provide a hard copy to the teacher for reference during the presentation.
• The student will subsequently give the presentation.
• The teacher will authenticate each student’s form and add comments on the presentation.

The section to be completed by the student requires responses to the following.

1. Describe your real-life situation.
2. State your central knowledge question.
3. Explain the connection between your real-life situation and your knowledge question.
4. Outline how you intend to develop your presentation, with respect to perspectives, subsidiary knowledge questions and arguments.
5. Show how your conclusions have significance for your real-life situation and beyond.

This should be presented in skeleton or bullet point form, typed in standard 12 font and not exceed 500 words. It is acceptable to include diagrams, as long as they are clearly related to the text. It is not permitted to exceed the two sides of the TK/PPD form.

Participants in a group presentation must be given the same marks. In a group presentation, not every student need speak for the same amount of time, but it is the presenters’ responsibility to ensure that all members of the group participate actively and make comparable contributions.

Moderation of internal assessment

The procedure for uploading the TK/PPD form can be found in the Handbook of procedures for the Diploma Programme.

Marks awarded by teachers for the presentation will be subject to moderation procedures through sampling of the associated TK/PPD forms that have been uploaded. The objective of this process is to judge whether the contents of the TK/PPD form justify the marks given by the teacher for the presentation.

In addition, some schools in each session may be required to record some or all of their presentations. These schools may be chosen:

• at random, in order to examine the relationships between plans and performance
• because students are producing excellent presentations which could be used for professional development purposes
• because an anomaly has been identified, for example, in the correlation between the marks for the presentations and the essays of students.

It is not necessary for schools to record presentations unless they are asked to do so, although it can be a useful exercise in order to standardize internal marking, where more than one teacher is involved.