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TOK Exhibition Assessment Criteria & Common Mistakes
How the rubric works, what examiners look for at each mark band, and the recurring errors that keep students below their potential grade.
Single Criterion
One criterion, four descriptors. Your teacher marks out of 10; IB moderates a sample. Unlike the essay, there are no multiple separate rubric qualities.
Moderated Externally
IB moderators review a sample of exhibitions from each school. School-wide marks can be adjusted up or down based on the moderation outcome.
Object + Commentary = Mark
Examiners assess both your object selection AND your commentary quality together. Strong commentaries with weak object choices score less than balanced combinations.
How the Exhibition is Assessed
The TOK Exhibition is marked using a single criterion with four performance descriptors, each covering a range of marks:
| Descriptor | Marks | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 9–10 | Objects are specific, real, and each connects to the IA prompt in a distinct and non-obvious way. Commentaries are analytical throughout, use TOK language with precision, and together build a nuanced exploration of the prompt. Little or no description. |
| Good | 7–8 | Objects are appropriate and connections are clear. Most commentary is analytical but there may be patches of description. TOK concepts are used correctly but not always with depth. The three objects together explore more than one dimension of the prompt. |
| Satisfactory | 5–6 | Objects are relevant but connections to the IA prompt may be superficial or not fully explained. Commentary may be mostly descriptive with moments of analysis. TOK language is used but sometimes incorrectly or without genuine engagement. |
| Basic | 3–4 | Objects are loosely related to the prompt’s theme but the TOK connection is not made clear. Commentary is predominantly descriptive. Little evidence of TOK thinking beyond surface-level vocabulary. |
| Rudimentary | 0–2 | Objects are not meaningfully connected to the IA prompt. Commentary is descriptive or off-topic. No genuine TOK thinking evident. |
What Examiners Focus on During Moderation
During IB moderation, examiners receive the student’s IA prompt, their three objects (or images of them), and their three commentaries. They do not have access to the teacher’s comments or the student’s context. They assess on the basis of:
- Appropriateness of objects: Are these real, specific objects that can carry genuine TOK analysis?
- Clarity of object-prompt connections: Is it explicit in the commentary why each object relates to the IA prompt — not just the theme of the prompt?
- Quality of TOK thinking: Does the commentary demonstrate genuine epistemological reflection, or just surface-level reference to TOK concepts?
- Analytical vs. descriptive balance: What proportion of the commentary is analytical (making claims about knowledge) versus descriptive (saying what the object shows)?
The Five Most Common Exhibition Mistakes
Mistake 1: Objects That Are Too General
“A textbook” instead of “the 2nd edition of Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics (1993), particularly the chapter on speciesism”. “A social media post” instead of “the specific Twitter thread by epidemiologist Carl Bergstrom on 11 March 2020 discussing COVID-19 modelling uncertainty”. Specificity enables analysis; generality only enables description.
Mistake 2: Commentary That Describes Rather Than Analyses
The most frequent reason for marks in the Satisfactory (5–6) band is commentary that explains what the object is and what it shows, rather than what knowledge questions it raises and how those questions relate to the IA prompt. Every sentence that describes is a wasted sentence.
Mistake 3: All Three Objects Make the Same Point
Three different objects, one argument. This is common and consistently marks below Grade Good (7–8). Each object should reveal a different dimension of the IA prompt — ideally, the three together should create a tension or richer understanding that no single object could achieve alone.
Mistake 4: Objects Not Connected to the Specific Wording of the Prompt
An object that relates to the topic area of the prompt but not to its specific knowledge question is a weak choice. For the prompt “To what extent is certainty attainable?”, an object that demonstrates “uncertainty exists” is insufficient. The commentary needs to address the word “attainable” — the degree question, not just the existence of the phenomenon.
Mistake 5: Over-Relying on Teacher Feedback as a Substitute for Genuine Thinking
Because the exhibition is internally assessed, some students iterate their objects and commentaries based on teacher feedback until the teacher is satisfied — without developing the underlying TOK thinking themselves. This becomes visible during moderation: commentaries that have been edited into acceptable TOK language without the thinking to support them often contain TOK terms used incorrectly or in disconnected ways that an experienced moderator spots immediately.
Treating the exhibition as a “simpler” component and leaving it until the last few weeks. The exhibition requires genuine intellectual work — finding strong objects is time-consuming, and writing 950 truly analytical words is harder than it sounds when every word must earn its place. Students who leave the exhibition until after the essay is submitted almost always produce weaker exhibitions than those who develop both components in parallel. Start object brainstorming early, before you have even chosen your essay title.
- My three objects are specific and real — each can be precisely identified
- Each commentary is approximately 300 words (total ~950)
- Every commentary sentence after the first is analytical, not descriptive
- Each commentary explicitly mentions my IA prompt by name or by direct reference
- My three objects explore different dimensions of the prompt — not the same argument
- I have not exceeded the word limit
- I use TOK concepts correctly — I can explain in my own words why I chose each term
- I have read at least one moderated sample exhibition at the Excellent level