introduction essay rubric

Score:             _________/80   = _________

Performance Inventory/ Legend

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Fall 2022)
• Workshop Registration

Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper, single-point rubric, more examples:.

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

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7.2: Rubrics

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WHAT IS A RUBRIC?

A rubric communicates expectations and creates consistent criteria and standards by which to evaluate a performance or project. In writing, a rubric allows teachers and students to evaluate an activity which can be complex and subjective. A rubric is aimed at accurate and fair assessment, fostering understanding, and indicating a way to proceed with subsequent learning and teaching. A rubric can also provide a basis for self-evaluation, reflection, and peer review.

WHY ARE RUBRICS IMPORTANT?

Rubrics help to…

• bring objectivity to subjective scoring.
• take away the “guessing game” by providing students with consistent standards the teacher will be using to evaluate their writing.
• teach students to set learning goals and take the responsibility for their learning into their own hands by knowing what skills make up a desired performance so they can strive to achieve it.
• assist students in developing their personal ability to judge excellence, or the lack thereof, in their work and the work of others.
• assure students that there is equality in grading and standardized expectations.
• praise students’ strengths and identify their weaknesses because rubrics provide visual representations of areas of excellence and under-performance allowing easy identification of what areas to work on at a glance.
• provide a clear means for students to monitor their progress on specific criteria over a given period of instruction or time.
• ensure for teachers that they are evaluating student work fairly, clearly and thoroughly.

HOW DO I DO IT?

The English professors at Skyline College have worked together to create a shared rubric so that regardless of English class or instructor, students will be evaluated according to a consistent set of criteria based on a shared understanding of writing fundamentals. All of the materials designed to instruct, evaluate and comment on student writing in this Rhetoric are based on that departmental rubric. Contained here are three different approaches using Skyline College’s English Departmental rubric to evaluate and comment on writing. These rubrics can be used by students to evaluate one another, and they can be used by instructors to evaluate students. This provides further consistency and shared expectations as the students and the instructor use the same evaluating tool.

Composition Essay Rubric with Explanations

How to : Check the appropriate rubric boxes and provide explanations afterwards of the ratings. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic and use the advice when revising.

Comments: further explanations behind the scoring choices along with revision advice (for more commenting space, insert electronically or attach additional page)

Literature Essay Rubric with Explanations

Composition essay rubric.

How to : Check the appropriate rubric boxes and provide explanations afterwards of the ratings. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic (link below) and use the advice when revising.

Literature Essay Rubric

Composition essay rubric with integrated comments.

How to : Check the appropriate rubric box and provide an explanation of the ratings by answering the questions below. Fill out each section thoroughly to provide thoughtful and comprehensive feedback. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic (link below) and use the advice when revising.

Literature Essay Rubric with Integrated Comments

Essay Rubric: Basic Guidelines and Sample Template

11 December 2023

last updated

Lectures and tutors provide specific requirements for students to meet when writing essays. Basically, an essay rubric helps tutors to analyze the quality of articles written by students. In this case, useful rubrics make the analysis process simple for lecturers as they focus on specific concepts related to the writing process. Also, an essay rubric list and organize all of the criteria into one convenient paper. In other instances, students use an essay rubric to enhance their writing skills by examining various requirements. Then, different types of essay rubrics vary from one educational level to another. For example, Master’s and Ph.D. essay rubrics focus on examining complex thesis statements and other writing mechanics. However, high school essay rubrics examine basic writing concepts. In turn, a sample template of a high school rubric in this article can help students to evaluate their papers before submitting them to their teachers.

General Aspects of an Essay Rubric

An essay rubric refers to the way how teachers assess student’s composition writing skills and abilities. Basically, an essay rubric provides specific criteria to grade assignments. In this case, teachers use essay rubrics to save time when evaluating and grading various papers. Hence, learners must use an essay rubric effectively to achieve desired goals and grades.

General Assessment Table for an Essay Rubric

1. organization.

Excellent/8 points: The essay contains stiff topic sentences and a controlled organization.

Very Good/6 points: The essay contains a logical and appropriate organization. The writer uses clear topic sentences.

Average/4 points: The essay contains a logical and appropriate organization. The writer uses clear topic sentences.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The essay has an inconsistent organization.

Unacceptable/0 points: The essay shows the absence of a planned organization.

Grade: ___ .

Excellent/8 points: The essay shows the absence of a planned organization.

Very Good/6 points: The paper contains precise and varied sentence structures and word choices. 

Average/4 points: The paper follows a limited but mostly correct sentence structure. There are different sentence structures and word choices.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The paper contains several awkward and unclear sentences. There are some problems with word choices.

Unacceptable/0 points: The writer does not contain apparent control over sentence structures and word choice.

Excellent/8 points: The content appears sophisticated and contains well-developed ideas.

Very Good/6 points: The essay content appears illustrative and balanced.

Average/4 points: The essay contains unbalanced content that requires more analysis.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The essay contains a lot of research information without analysis or commentary.

Unacceptable/0 points: The essay lacks relevant content and does not fit the thesis statement . Essay rubric rules are not followed.

Excellent/8 points: The essay contains a clearly stated and focused thesis statement.

Very Good/6 points: The written piece comprises a clearly stated argument. However, the focus would have been sharper.

Average/4 points: The thesis phrasing sounds simple and lacks complexity. The writer does not word the thesis correctly. 

Needs Improvement/2 points: The thesis statement requires a clear objective and does not fit the theme in the content of the essay.

Unacceptable/0 points: The thesis is not evident in the introduction.

Excellent/8 points: The essay is clear and focused. The work holds the reader’s attention. Besides, the relevant details and quotes enrich the thesis statement.

Very Good/6 points: The essay is mostly focused and contains a few useful details and quotes.

Average/4 points: The writer begins the work by defining the topic. However, the development of ideas appears general.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The author fails to define the topic well, or the writer focuses on several issues.

Unacceptable/0 points: The essay lacks a clear sense of a purpose or thesis statement. Readers have to make suggestions based on sketchy or missing ideas to understand the intended meaning. Essay rubric requirements are missed.

6. Sentence Fluency

Excellent/8 points: The essay has a natural flow, rhythm, and cadence. The sentences are well built and have a wide-ranging and robust structure that enhances reading.

Very Good/6 points: The ideas mostly flow and motivate a compelling reading.

Average/4 points: The text hums along with a balanced beat but tends to be more businesslike than musical. Besides, the flow of ideas tends to become more mechanical than fluid.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The essay appears irregular and hard to read.

Unacceptable/0 points: Readers have to go through the essay several times to give this paper a fair interpretive reading.

7. Conventions

Excellent/8 points: The student demonstrates proper use of standard writing conventions, like spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, usage, and paragraphing. The student uses protocols in a way that improves the readability of the essay.

Very Good/6 points: The student demonstrates proper writing conventions and uses them correctly. One can read the essay with ease, and errors are rare. Few touch-ups can make the composition ready for publishing.

Average/4 points: The writer shows reasonable control over a short range of standard writing rules. The writer handles all the conventions and enhances readability. The errors in the essay tend to distract and impair legibility.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The writer makes an effort to use various conventions, including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, and paragraphing. The essay contains multiple errors.

Unacceptable/0 points: The author makes repetitive errors in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, usage, and paragraphing. Some mistakes distract readers and make it hard to understand the concepts. Essay rubric rules are not covered.

8. Presentation

Excellent/8 points: The form and presentation of the text enhance the readability of the essay and the flow of ideas.

Very Good/6 points: The format has few mistakes and is easy to read.

Average/4 points: The writer’s message is understandable in this format.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The writer’s message is only comprehensible infrequently, and the paper appears disorganized.

Unacceptable/0 points: Readers receive a distorted message due to difficulties connecting to the presentation of the text.

Final Grade: ___ .

Grading Scheme for an Essay Rubric:

• A+ = 60+ points
• A = 55-59 points
• A- = 50-54 points
• B+ = 45-49 points
• B = 40-44 points
• B- = 35-39 points
• C+ = 30-34 points
• C = 25-29 points
• C- = 20-24 points
• D = 10-19 points
• F = less than 9 points

Basic Differences in Education Levels and Essay Rubrics

The quality of essays changes at different education levels. For instance, college students must write miscellaneous papers when compared to high school learners. In this case, an essay rubric will change for these different education levels. For example, university and college essays should have a debatable thesis statement with varying points of view. However, high school essays should have simple phrases as thesis statements. Then, other requirements in an essay rubric will be more straightforward for high school students. For master’s and Ph.D. essays, the criteria presented in an essay rubric should focus on examining the paper’s complexity. In turn, compositions for these two categories should have thesis statements that demonstrate a detailed analysis of defined topics that advance knowledge in a specific area of study.

Summing Up on an Essay Rubric

Essay rubrics help teachers, instructors, professors, and tutors to analyze the quality of essays written by students. Basically, an essay rubric makes the analysis process simple for lecturers. Essay rubrics list and organize all of the criteria into one convenient paper. In other instances, students use the essay rubrics to improve their writing skills. However, they vary from one educational level to the other. Master’s and Ph.D. essay rubrics focus on examining complex thesis statements and other writing mechanics. However, high school essay rubrics examine basic writing concepts.  The following are some of the tips that one must consider when preparing a rubric.

• contain all writing mechanics that relates to essay writing;
• cover different requirements and their relevant grades;
• follow clear and understandable statements.

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Rubric Introduction

While many educators have heard of rubrics, many people have never even heard the word. We all use some form of rubric in our daily lives, even if they are not written down on paper. We might use a rubric in our mind to decide which food we like best on our plate. Is it too salty, just right, or not enough salt? In this article, we will take a look at rubrics; exploring what they are, what they do, why we need them, how we make them, how we use them, etc. The end goal is that you will see the benefits of rubrics, understand how to adapt to overcome their shortcomings and make the most of their strengths, and be able to effectively develop, utilize, and evaluate an exemplary rubric in your own practice.

We start with a definition of a rubric below. Guide yourself through the presentation, and then select one of the links below to move on through this rubric guide.

A tool used to assess or guide a student’s performance on a given task in a given context given certain standards.

Rubric use:

• Assess depth and breadth of knowledge
• Provide students with valuable feedback
• Formatively assess a student’s performance
• Inform students of standards and expectations
• Rubrics can provide that key.
• Reproducible scoring by a single individual is enhanced.
• Reproducible scoring by multiple individuals can be enhanced with training.
• Greater precision and reliability among scored assessments.
• They allow for better peer feedback on student graded work.
• Scoring can be prescribed by the rubric and not the instructor predispositions towards students.
• They allow better or more accurate self-assessment by students.
• If parents, students, colleagues, or administrators question a grade, the rubric can be used to validate it.
• They allow justification and validation of scoring among other stakeholders.
• Students can compare their assignment to the rubric to see why they received the grade that they did.
• They tell you what was important enough to assess.
• They allow comparison of lesson objectives to what is assessed.
• Instruction can be redesigned to meet objectives with assessed items.
• Students can use them as a guide to completing an assignment. They help students with process and possibly increase the quality of student work.
• Rubrics provide an opportunity for important professional discussions when they are brought up in scholarly communication.
• They keep you focused on what you intend to assess.
• They allow you to organize your thoughts.
• They can provide a scaffold with which the students can learn.
• Non-scoring rubrics can encourage students to self-assess their performance.

Disadvantages

• They may not fully convey all we want students to know. If you use the rubric to tell students what to put in an assignment, then that may be all they they put. It may also be all that they learn. Multiple assessments are useful ways around this disadvantage, as well as directed instruction or discussion coupled with the assignment.
• They may limit imagination if students feel compelled to complete the assignment strictly as outlined in the rubric. It is important to have creativity as a criteria if you wish students to be more adventurous in their assignments.
• They could lead to anxiety if they include too many criteria. Students may feel that there is just too much involved in the assignment. Good rubrics keep it simple.
• Reliability can be a factor as more individuals use the rubric. Especially when used for peer assessment among untrained users, the reproducibility and reliability will be reduced.
• They take time to develop, test, evaluate, and update.

Sample Rubric

A look at a rubric.

In general, a rubric will look like the following grid. We will discuss the design more when we look at creating a rubric.

A = exceptional (quality, NOT QUANTITY, goes above and beyond expectations);   worthy of a professional portfolio; addresses every major subheading in the assignment; does not summarize or paraphrase the content of the chapter, rather demonstrates content mastery using examples of and/or personalized reflections about the content of the chapter; demonstrates an applied level of understanding through personalized reflections about the content area, literacy strategies, and procedures used to read and learn the chapter content.

B = excellent (superior quality, NOT QUANTITY, in meeting expectations); worthy of a professional portfolio; addresses most subheadings in the assignment; does not summarize or paraphrase the content of the chapter, rather demonstrates content mastery by using examples of and/or personalized reflections about the content of the chapter; demonstrates an applied level of understanding through personalized reflections about the content area, literacy strategies, and procedures used to read and learn the chapter content.

C = acceptable (satisfactory quality and quantity in meeting expectations); needs substantial revision to be worthy of a professional portfolio; addresses about half the major subheadings in the assignment; includes some summarizing or paraphrasing of chapter content; demonstrates content mastery using examples of and/or personalized reflections about the content of the chapter; demonstrates an applied level of understanding through personalized reflections about the content area, literacy strategies, and procedures used to read and learn the chapter content.

D = unacceptable quality (does not meet expectations); needs substantial revision to be worthy of a professional portfolio; addresses less than half the major subheadings in the assignment; consists primarily of a summary of main ideas from the chapter content; summarized information is accurate

F = no credit (effort not worthy of credit); needs substantial revision to be worthy of a professional portfolio; addresses no more than one major subheading in the assignment; consists primarily of a summary of main ideas from the chapter content; summarized information is inaccurate. 

Understanding the TOK essay rubric

TOK Home > Free TOK notes > TOK essay guidance > Understanding the TOK essay rubric

After understanding the of the basics of the essay, your next step is to grasp how it is evaluated and marked, which is outlined in the ‘assessment instrument’. Your TOK teacher will give you a copy of this, or you can find it online in the 2022 TOK Guide.

The overall assessment objective of the TOK essay is to answer the prescribed essay title in a clear, coherent, and critical way. In order to do this, the assessment ‘instrument’ looks for five different skills.

STEP 1: Understand the TOK essay rubric

1. making links to tok.

The discussion within your TOK essay should be linked very effectively to the  areas of knowledge . Most, TOK essays expect you to discuss two AOKs, which will provide you with the context to explore and answer the prescribed title you’ve chosen.

2. Understanding perspectives

Your TOK essay should show a clear awareness of different points of view, and should offer an evaluation of them. This means considering how different perspective might approach the question in different ways.

3. Offering an effective argument

The arguments within your TOK essay are clear and coherent, and are supported by strong examples.

This means expressing your opinions clearly, and supporting them with original and meaningful real-life situations.

4. Keeping discussions relevant

Your essay’s discussions should offer a ‘sustained focus’ on the title. This means that you should be able to pick out any section of your essay, and be able to identify what question it is answering.

5. Considering implications

Your essay needs to not just present and evaluate arguments, it also needs to say why these arguments are significant, and what their implications are.

After you have grasped the rubric strands, you are ready to move on to choosing your prescribed title from the choice of six that are published in March or November – which we provide guidance on here .

Creating a TOK essay: our four-step guide

Click on the buttons below to take you to the four steps of creating a great TOK essay. Don’t forget that we have plenty of videos on this and other aspects of the course, and members of the site have access to a huge amount of other resources to help you master the course and assessment tasks.

How to write a TOK essay: webinar

This 80-minute webinar video and presentation gives you a clear, engaging, step-by-step guide to the task, helping you to understand the assessment rubric, choose the right PT, and produce an essay that hits all the assessment targets.

The video is supported by a presentation, and a Q&A debrief answering some of the most common questions asked about writing a TOK essay. Purchase your ticket here .

More support for the TOK essay

Make sure that your TOK teacher has given you access to all the documents and online material that support the essay. These include the TOK Subject Guide, the TOK essay rubric, and exemplar TOK essays (found in ‘MyIB’, which is accessible to teachers).   Make sure you go through our other pages on writing the TOK essay. You’ll find help on understanding what the is looking for, that works for you, what each of the should focus on, how to an effective TOK essay, and how to fill in your .   If your school is a  member  of theoryofknowledge.net, we have designed a series of lessons on the essay, with two formative assessment tasks. These will familiarize you with the essay rubric, knowledge questions, real-life situations, how to deal with perspectives and implications, and structuring an essay. If you are signed into the site, you can access these lessons  here .   You can also find out our thoughts on the TOK essay (and the TOK exhibition) in several webinars that we have delivered. The main one is the TOK Assessment 2022 webinar, but we also consider this form of assessment in our free webinars on the 2022 course. You can see these webinars on  this page  of the site.

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Decades after Mr. Goldberg, a cartoonist, died, artists and engineers have found creative inspiration in his outlandish inventions.

By Sam Corbin

What’s the simplest way to open a can? Faced with this question, most would suggest a can opener. The artist Rube Goldberg, however, believed the task could be better accomplished using a golf club, waltzing mice and a disgruntled pet dragon whose fire-breathing would light a welding torch positioned in front of the closed can. Simple.

This approach to everyday tasks was summarized in the introduction to “The Art of Rube Goldberg,” a collection of Mr. Goldberg’s work that was published in 2013. “These are things that need doing,” the introduction, written by Adam Gopnik, reads, “but they don’t need this much doing.”

Mr. Goldberg was half-kidding with such inventions, or “satirical representations of progressive nothing,” as he once called them. Even so, it is uncanny to observe how his legacy seems to function like one of them, setting off precisely engineered chaos in every direction.

This month, young engineers from around the country gathered at Purdue University in Indiana for the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest and demonstrated contraptions that could put toothpaste on a toothbrush; notable efforts featured evil wizards, volcanoes, miniature Jeeps and a clever “Rubenheimer” assembly, inspired by last year’s “ Barbenheimer ” phenomenon. In Norway, a performance artist was busy crafting another Rubelike contraption to break dry pasta over his head for his TikTok following. And every few years, the inventor’s influence shines through in a board game, or a music video . Rube has, in effect, become a rubric.

In an essay for Popular Science in 1923 titled “Why I Am an Inventor (Do I Hear a Laugh?),” Mr. Goldberg expressed a belief that his drawings, fantastic as they might seem, could inspire something of real use. “Perhaps I may yet come across my big idea in working out some of my foolish cartoons,” Mr. Goldberg wrote. “The field is wide and strange things happen.”

One could hardly mistake a drawing of a Rube Goldberg machine for the blueprints of a self-serious inventor, as each was attributed to a fictional Professor Butts. Whenever Mr. Goldberg played on untraditional uses for household objects, he anthropomorphized them and consigned them in pairs to “Boob McNutt’s Ark.” And lest readers begin to take these pokes at the industrial age too much to heart, the cartoonist created a meta-forum to answer for his drawings, in a comic strip called “Foolish Questions.”

Zach Umperovitch, who is the national contest director for the Rube Goldberg Institute, which organizes the event at Purdue, described this tongue-in-cheek attitude as essential to distinguishing a Rube Goldberg machine from simpler chain reactions such as domino topples.

“What really makes something a Rube Goldberg, what sets it apart and above, is that humor or that ridiculous nature,” said Mr. Umperovitch, who also hosts “Contraption Masters,” a series on the Discovery Channel.

Mr. Umperovitch himself had for a long time held the Guinness World Record for the largest Rube Goldberg machine — using 300 steps to inflate and pop a balloon — and regularly used a Goldberg contraption to hand out his business cards. “It’s six simple machines, all to open a box, which then spits out my card.”

There is a timeless appeal to this mechanized subversion of expectations. It will always be funny to see a complex machine whiz and whir just to accomplish what is essentially a wry wink about having wasted your time. But artists have found ways to capitalize on this exercise in futility, using Mr. Goldberg’s machines as creative fodder for meaningful explorations of their crafts.

Andy Biskin, a New York-based clarinetist and composer who created an evening of jazz set to animated illustrations of Rube Goldberg — called “Goldberg’s Variations,” in a nod to Johann Sebastian Bach — saw a meaningful parallel between music and machine.

“A piece of composition is an invention for sure,” Mr. Biskin said. “It is a machine.”

Mr. Biskin noted that he found it challenging at times to stretch his compositions to match the Goldberg inventions’ circuitous accomplishment of their designated tasks. But, in reflecting on how “music is just a way of filling up time sometimes,” he said he also discovered a new compositional process: He composed “Interludes,” a set of shorter conceptual pieces inspired by wheels, clocks and other ephemera from the Goldberg cartoons.

“The physical cartoons are just like training wheels,” Mr. Biskin said. “And then you can write machines without the machines.”

Students competing in the machine contest, which scores contraptions based on creativity, complexity and the completion of the designated task, seemed instead to benefit from an inverse correlation with the inanity of their creations. In email interviews, they wrote about having developed lasting skills and passions that far outshone the brief excitement of watching their inventions run.

Tim Giannini, a senior at Purdue whose team’s machine won in the college category, said that he loved spending hours “messing with little mechanisms and random objects” in the hopes of finding “a unique combination that no one else has thought of before.”

He and his cohort were certainly successful in that respect: Their machine’s toothbrush was styled as an evil wizard, perched at the top of a tower, who triggered a small missile that eventually knocked him into the path of a volcano. The tower’s fall triggered a weight, which released a compressed-air piston that dumped a flask of hydrogen peroxide into a mixture of water, yeast, dish soap and dye to create colorful elephant toothpaste . This mixture foamed and overflowed from the volcano onto the toothbrush wizard, completing the task.

Having grown up playing with engineering-focused toys such as Lego and K’nex, Mr. Giannini found that “this club and what we do sparked that same spark that I found playing with those toys as a child.”

“It’s more than just agreeing with someone to avoid arguing,” said Sophia Arleo Thompson, a sophomore at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York and co-captain of the “Rubenheimer” team, which won the People’s Choice Award. “It’s confronting each other and having meaningful conversations about how we can combine ideas to create the best solution possible.”

Ms. Thompson hopes to pursue mechanical engineering on a pre-med track in college. Beyond the more profound outcomes of her team’s collaboration, she said, the Rube Goldberg club at her school was just plain fun. “I get to use power tools and hot glue for hours on end every weekend.”

In revisiting the cartoons of Mr. Goldberg that inspired the competition, it becomes difficult to ignore the wartime context that looms over them. Indeed, although Mr. Goldberg, who died in 1970, has become synonymous with mechanized tomfoolery, the cartoon that eventually earned him a Pulitzer Prize was pure political commentary. He won in 1948 for a single panel titled “Peace Today,” which featured a family perched on the top of an atomic bomb teetering perilously at the edge of a cliff labeled “World destruction.”

If Mr. Goldberg’s original drawings served as satire for a heavily industrialized society, their contemporary analogues nearly a century later might be seen as responses to the detritus of that society, which suffered the economic and social effects of emphasizing efficiency above the human spirit. Jan Hakon Erichsen, a performance artist based in Norway whose destructive chain-reaction contraptions receive millions of views on social media , has even begun to see himself as part of the joke.

Mr. Erichsen’s performances often feature the deft use of his body in the accomplishment of utterly nonsensical tasks: He engineers a suspended hacksaw to slice dried spaghetti off his head; swings his knife-covered legs over a row of balloons to pop them; creates a life vest out of loaves of bread, then jumps into a freezing lake. These exercises may lack in complexity, but they nevertheless transfix the audiences who follow them to their predictable conclusions (the bread-loaf life vest, for instance, was immediately waterlogged).

The completion of these absurd tasks was hardly the point for Mr. Erichsen; nor did he hope to protest the dangers of an overcomplicated future. His Goldbergian ambition was rather to encourage audiences to find new ways of seeing inventions already in existence.

“You have all these mundane objects around you which you don’t really even think about anymore,” he said. “Because you’ve seen them so many times that you kind of go blind.”

Sam Corbin writes about language, wordplay and the daily crossword for The Times. More about Sam Corbin

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