Step-by-step: How to Make a TOK Presentation

The TOK Presentation can be confusing and full of so many little parts that you might not even be sure where to start. Or maybe you think the TOK Presentation is a piece of cake and just wanna check out what other people do for their own so you can make yours as good as possible.

 I have been asked by different students about different parts of the TOK Presentation and what steps they should take. Because of this, I've compiled a little list of steps I took in my own TOK Presentation from beginning to end with an example (highlighted in yellow) so you can get an idea for how you could phrase things. 

Keep in mind that this definitely doesn't work for everyone, but could give you peace of mind when trying to figure out how to do your own :)

In total, this guide has 7 steps:

1. Identify your preferred AOKs (Areas of Knowledge) /WOKs (Ways of Knowing)
2. Come up with a list of possible RLSs (Real Life Situations)
3. Come up with central KQ (Knowledge Question)
4. Connect the KQ & RLS
5. Write down as many arguments/concepts you need to consider to understand the KQ, categorise these by sections
6. Creating conclusive remarks
7. Finding your 2nd RLS
8. Making the Presentation Title

Before starting this post, make sure you're familiar with the TOK Outline which I've pasted below:

Presentation Planning

Presentation Title:

Describe your real-life situation:

State your central knowledge question (this must be expressed as a question):

Explain the connection between your real life situation and your knowledge question:

Outline how you intend to develop your TOK presentation in the context of your real-life situation. Include analysis of your main knowledge question and related knowledge questions as well as arguments and perspectives. Responses can be presented in continuous prose or as a list of points:

Show the significance of your conclusions with particular reference to your real-life situation and indicate how those conclusions might be relevant to other real-life situations:



Step 1: Identify your preferred AOKs/WOKs

Everyone has some preference toward what AOK or WOK they'd like to study, and some that they avoid at all costs. For example, I knew that I wanted to pretty much avoid talking about the AOKs of Mathematics & Natural Sciences, and I would much rather talk about the Human Sciences or Ethics or History. As you can see, they're quite

Let's say I narrowed my search of AOKs to Human Sciences or Ethics, I could also take a quick look at the possible WOKs I would be okay with trying to look into. I noticed that one of the WOKs that connect pretty well to the Human Sciences & Ethics: Memory.

The reason I would want to pick a WOK that's similar to my AOKs to narrow down what my RLS could be is the fact that they're all pretty similar, and therefore I would spend less time researching as most of the examples would overlap.

So, let's take a look at the things I narrowed my search down to for my example Presentation:
AOK: Human Sciences
AOK: Ethics
WOK: Memory





Step 2: Come up with a list of possible RLSs

The list of possible RLSs is expansive for all AOKs and WOKs, taking many hours of research. Off the top of my head, I would specifically focus on controversial situations that have been ethically questionable, problems with memory possibly distorting how events are recounted, psychological/philosophical elements in famous events, etc. I would compile this all on a Google Doc with my group and find different news articles and Wikipedia pages that led us to controversial events.

From this, I compiled a basic list of possible types of RLSs I could try find:

- famous court cases (with controversial outcomes preferably)
- focus on the role of untrustworthy eyewitnesses in famous trials
- the recounting of historical periods and events (personal accounts from Nazi Germany, for example)
- flashbulb memory events (memories of 9/11, for example)

This is not the perfect list of RLSs, but you can see how just starting from a basic framework can give you a bit of direction toward how you could do your presentation!

From here, I found this document full of different people put on Death Row by mistake due to eyewitness testimony: https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/legacy/files/pdf/StudyCWC2001A.pdf. From here, I would look into which seem most interesting to my group and from there we would select our focus. From choosing a specific case with identified people involved and happening at a certain time, we have a TOK RLS. As I went into detail about earlier in this post, you can't just have a generic RLS relating to eyewitness testimony generally, so this is an example of a good place to start.


Step 3: Come up with central KQ

Identify the AOK or WOK you're going to focus on and vaguely connect that to your chosen RLS. In its broadest sense, I can thus link 1 of the "court case" to the general idea that people's perception of what "actually" happened is largely determined by their memory. Therefore, I can come up with a central KQ that intertwines these 2 major concepts:

To what extent do memories distort our perception of the world?

So, from here we'll continue to try make the connection explicit.

Step 4: Connect the KQ & RLS

In the TOK Outline, the "connection" section can go along the lines of:

We thought that [insert Subject A] interesting to unpack because [insert Reason A]....

From this, you can see you actually need to make this connection personal to your own group and your personal wants of doing the presentation on this topic. Therefore, our group would continue on to say something similar

... Understanding the relationship between memory and the rest of the world's perception of certain events is crucial in understanding the way our world works today. Our perception of events deemed historically significant appear to be incredibly influenced by the firsthand accounts of people (eyewitness accounts), even if their recollection is distorted for a variety of reasons... 

From this example, you can see how your bridged into understanding how your chosen WOK/AOK and RLS are intertwined and why it's important to study them together. You should explicitly mention your RLS at some point of this section in your TOK Outline to further make sure you seem as grounded in the RLS as possible.

Step 5: Write down as many arguments/concepts you need to consider to understand the KQ, categorise these by sections

This is one of the most time confusing parts of the presentation, to be completely honest. You are essentially forming the main arguments to guide your presentation, as well as coming up with examples to back them up and even more KQs to show how deeply you understand the topic. You have a few choices as to how to organise your train of thought.

As stated before, there are essentially 3 sections to your arguments:

Section 1 
Claim 1:
Evidence:
Counterclaim 1:
Evidence:  

Section 2
Claim 2:
Evidence:
Counterclaim 2:
Evidence: 

Section 3 
Claim 3:
Evidence:
Counterclaim 3:
Evidence:

Let's unpack what you need in a single section:

Section 1: 
This should be titled something relevant to the specific perspective this argument is part of. For example, this section could be focused on the role of Personal Knowledge in memory formation. In comparison, the next section might be about the role of Shared Knowledge. These are 2 different major perspectives, and are therefore given 2 separate sections to be discussed in.

This title should NOT be included on the form, however should instead serve the purpose of showing your group how you've grouped major ideas together and how to smoothly progress from one point to another.

Claim 1: 
This is where you insert 1 of your 3 major arguments. An example of this within the example being used is that:

"The way in which an individual views the world is entirely determined by their memory"

Evidence:
Here, you can list briefly some examples that prove the argument you just made, even if you totally disagree with it. Finding good evidence to back up your argument shows that you've really thought about the arguments you're presenting and that you're an open-minded IB student ;)

Taking again the example provided, this evidence could range from examples of recounting of historical events through autobiographies, the role of traumatic events (ie. witnessing 9/11) and its impact on later life, etc. Finding as many videos, books and articles that clearly support this argument is ideal! 

For each claim, there should be 1-3 "pieces of evidence", so essentially 1-3 examples from everyday life that back up the argument you're making. Similarly, there should be 1-3 pieces of evidence for your counterclaims.

Counterclaim 1:

This needs to be a counterargument to the claim you just made, however it doesn't need as much analysis as the claim. An example of a counterclaim in this example would be something like:

"The previous claim is not entirely valid, as individuals do not need to rely on their memory to perceive the world"

Here, I've tried to clearly link both claims to each other, and similarly I would find examples to back up this point. 

Evidence:  

I would try to find examples relating to those that have memory loss or have had brain injuries, and how that has affected their perception of the world. Furthermore, I would try to find other examples of daily life that you have no memories to rely on to perceive the world with so you aren't just using outlandish and far-fetched examples to back up your point.

Step 6: Creating conclusive remarks

This is an opportunity to condense your strongest points and to tie it into a quick, memorable story for the teacher to remember. If it's done well, the teacher will be left thinking largely about your last points and base points on that. If your presentation has been a bit all over the place up until the end, you can see this as the last ditch effort to make your presentation as clear as possible and try to score some final points.

Your conclusion slide for the presentation should largely serve 3 main purposes:

1. summarise what's been discussed
2. try to "answer" your KQ using this summary
3. bring up a 2nd main RLS that is significant in demonstrating how broad your understanding of your KQ is

In doing so, you should bring up your absolute strongest evidence for opposing sides and form a cohesive "story" that leads the watcher to arrive at a bit of a lightbulb moment. 

Step 7: Finding your 2nd RLS

Needs to be pretty much completely different from the original RLS you chose, but still related to the AOK/WOK you chose to focus on. You can take a look at the list of original possible RLSs you considered (as usually you'll have a somewhat broad idea of the type of RLS that would suit the KQ).

All you gotta do is pick one of the best RLSs you probably nearly used instead of the one you chose, try to make sure it's not very close to the one you ended up choosing, and your done. By just talking about it for a minute, you secure points for showing how your knowledge from the whole presentation creation process you understand the world a whole lot better (even if you don't really). It's a small thing you can do for a big reward: a possible boost of a point or two. Try to keep this to around 1-2 minutes of explanation.


Step 8: Making the Presentation Title

I know this is a bit strange, but I'd recommend you edit the presentation title last. I'll tell you why:

This is meant to be 4-6 words, and should be decided toward the end of you completing your presentation as whole. This is because you will be changing your direction and examples plenty of times throughout the process, so you'll only have a clear picture about what you'll discuss pretty much at the very end of the whole thing.