Over the past year, the International Baccalaureate program has been making lots of changes to the Theory of Knowledge course, and I’ve posted about them all.

The changes continue…

IB just sent out a document to all IB Coordinators sharing even more changes around the TOK oral presentation and the essay.

In regards to the presentation, I’ve already published a number of posts about the new planning documents (Here Is The Simple Outline I’m Having My TOK Students Use For Their Oral Presentation). The additional change, though, is for group presentations:

Please note that each candidate must submit a planning and presentation document. For group presentations, each candidate in the group will submit to their teacher, their own form which will be identical to the forms submitted by the other members of the group.

Of course, that’s a bit inconsistent with the actual IB form, which asks for all group member names and then asks for each group member to sign it. But, hey, Emerson did say, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…”

For the essay, IB says students now have to complete something called “Theory of knowledge: planning and progress form” that will be submitted with the essay. I haven’t seen it yet since I find the IB site rather Byzantinian both to log-into and to search.

IB also has now provided a three-part structure we’re supposed to follow in working with students on the essay:

In an initial interaction the candidate and teacher should discuss the prescribed titles with the aim of enabling the candidate to choose the most appropriate title; in an interim interaction the candidate may present the teacher with his or her work (an exploration) in some written form which might resemble a set of notes and ideas once a significant amount of progress has been made; and in a final interaction, towards the end of the process, candidates may present a full draft of the essay, and teachers may provide written comments of a global nature (but is not permitted to mark or edit this draft).

Let me know if you get a copy of the essay “planning and progress form” before I do….