Academic dishonesty is a serious offence in the IB Diploma – some students have not been granted their diplomas because of it. As the IB Diploma involves a lot of writing, students will need to make sure their work adheres to the IBO’s guidelines on plagiarism. Students commonly resort to plagiarism because they may not be clear on the task they are supposed to perform or because they have left everything to the last minute. Students should remember that plagiarism is not worth it – it will lead to disastrous consequences in the long run.
Nowadays, ChatGPT and other AI tools can help students write essays. Students who want a solution as to how to write their essays in such a short time frame may think that AI is the way to do less work. However, the IB can check if AI has been used easily with the help of AI Check tools like Turnitin AI Tool, Grammarly, and Winston AI. These software can track the features of AI-generated content and analyse whether the student has used AI tools.
If a student is found to have overly used AI or have more than 5% of plagiarism in their work, they will face serious consequences both internally and from the IBO. Your educational institution could lower your grades, put you on academic suspension, or even expel you. IBO has also been known to not award students their diploma. Students will get an “N” grade in the subject concerned and their certificate will read “diploma not awarded”.
Techniques to avoid plagiarising
Acknowledge your sources clearly
If you have plagiarised something, you will surely know it. If you reference an idea that you did not come up with or use a set of words that someone else has used, you should add a citation in your writing which shows the full name of the source, when it was published, and any other citation element which is required by the style guide. If you need help compiling your citations, you could use citation generators like Cite This For Me to help you.
Paraphrase or use your own words
When a student wants to present ideas that are not their own, they should paraphrase the words. Paraphrasing means the student must rewrite the source’s ideas or information in their own words without changing its meaning. Students need to make sure that the writing is reword and reformatted in an original way and avoid using too many similar words to the source. Paraphrased sentences need to be cited – not doing so can slip into plagiarism.
Include quotations
If you are using a set of words and you need to use these specific words to make your point, avoid plagiarism by using quotation marks around the text which you did not write. However, using too many quotations could make reading your essay very disjointed and difficult. As such, students should use quotations judiciously and ensure that their essay has a nice flow.
Use a plagiarism checker
Students who want to be completely sure that they have not plagiarised anything should run their work through a plagiarism checker before submitting it to the IB. Students should look at the report that comes out of the plagiarism checker – it should state which sentences have been plagiarised and the source. If there are any sources which have not been cited, students should do one final comb through their essay to identify things that still need citations.
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Although the IB school provides mentors for the EE and teachers at school can guide students through their IA, attention to each student is often limited in a classroom setting and many students are left to figure things out by themselves. This results in difficulty completing internal deadlines on time, especially when a student needs to juggle all their 6 subjects and the additional components of the IB, along with their CCAs and other commitments.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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