Academic Honesty in the IB Diploma

What is Academic Honesty? “Academic Integrity/ Honesty” means performing all academic work without plagiarism, cheating, lying, tampering, stealing, receiving unauthorized or illegitimate assistance from any other person, or using any source of information that is not common knowledge.

What is Academic Dishonesty? "Academic Dishonesty" means knowingly performing, attempting to perform, or assisting any other person in performing any academic work that does not meet this standard of academic honesty.

Why is Academic Honesty Important?

IB Diploma students understand that academic integrity comes from honesty in learning and research. Genuine and sometimes hard-won knowledge and respect comes from presenting one’s own work and acknowledging the work of others.

Personal and academic honesty fosters trust. Mutual trust among all members of the IB community is essential for a positive learning environment. Through mutual trust, we can conduct research and learn with confidence.

Finally, we all have a responsibility to uphold the values of academic integrity.

Academic Honesty and Uplands: As members of the Uplands community, we are committed to cultivating an environment of mutual respect, honesty, fairness, and responsibility, because we know those values and actions cause others to respect us and the work we do. The value of the IB Diploma and the International School of Penang (Uplands) is raised because of our academic integrity.

So What?

Up until now, you have not formally been held accountable for academic honesty. Well guess what, the goal posts have changed.

With each of your IB Subjects you will complete research and report on your findings. Every time you read someone else’s work and include it in a project or any other assessed submission you have a duty to acknowledge the source of your information.

If you do not acknowledge where the information came from (a citation) this is plagiarism and you put at risk your ability to achieve your IB Diploma.

IT IS THAT SIMPLE: Reflection: How many times have you submitted work using material from the internet and not stated where it came from? Did you plagiarize on purpose? Or were you just ignorant?

If your answer is the latter, does that make it okay? Do you think the assessors from the IBO will accept ignorance as an appropriate excuse?

How can you avoid Plagiarism? The IB Diploma stipulates that for all Internal Assessment, the Extended Essay and TOK essay Academic Honesty is paramount.

Uplands acknowledges that there are a number of referencing styles students can use to avoid plagiarism. Today you will be introduced to 2 tools we use at Uplands to achieve this crucial objective.

MLA Referencing

Online resources available: http://library.williams.edu/citing/styles/mla.php

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

How can you & your teachers check your academic honesty?

What does a turnitin report look like?

Let’s get you all signed up!

Example of Setting up your Turnitin Account: From Maclachlan College

So now you have the ingredients needed to be able to avoid plagiarism. Questia:

MLA Referencing:

Turnitin:

Happy researching and happy writing!