The TOK exhibition is an exhibition required to showcase an IB student’s understanding of TOK and knowledge as a subject, and I was involved with a group of students to organise it. This included everything from getting venue permissions to managing the decor, and utilised the talents of the entire team, with a mixed effort of around 20 days.
LO 2 – It was challenging because of the logistics of the event, and the requirement of both artistic and management skills for both the planning and decorations. I have done event organization before, but on a smaller scale, so even though some of the skills translated, a lot of new skills had to be developed. For example, we had problems getting our decorations approved, so we employed the use of reflection to look back and create better decorations.
LO 3 – We had to constantly not only manage the time but also resources. A common spreadsheet was created to help with the planning and different people could add to it so that the planning was better organized. Even a Gantt chart was employed to make the process smoother, and external time was allotted for each task in case we exceeded the limits as a leeway. In spite of the challenges of managing the time of different people at once and figuring out common free slots and early-ins, we were able to efficiently organize the event.
LO 5 – Working collaboratively was what tied this event together. Working with others is often beneficial, however, there were some people that I had never worked with creatively before. Once we set apart the initial barrier, the work was done collectively and divided based on each member’s strengths, such as art students helping with the board designs and other creating the invites and such. Furthermore, group members were able to help each other in things such as decor approval and brainstorming, which made the task easier as 10 people were working together
This made me more knowledgeable, with the team work making me a better communicator and better at time management, along with creative inputs helping me to develop my creative and critical thinking. This also benefited our whole grade as it gave them a platform to exhibit their TOK knowledge, and I feel like the experience from this could be used in management and leadership positions in the future.
