Keep assessed work traceable to your own decisions
Build research and draft habits that preserve authorship, acknowledge assistance and prevent source confusion.
Know the boundaries of the task
Read your school's academic integrity policy and the support rules for the specific assessment. Confirm what collaboration, tools and feedback are permitted. Rules can differ across tasks, so an approach allowed in class practice may not be appropriate in assessed work. Keep the focus on submitting work that represents your own learning and decisions. Acknowledgement is necessary when using others' material, but it does not make every kind of outside assistance acceptable. Resolve uncertainty early with the teacher rather than relying on a peer's interpretation.
Separate material at the note-taking stage
When collecting sources, label direct quotations, summaries and your own responses clearly. Record author, title, date and relevant location details at once. Do the same for images, data, diagrams, audiovisual material and code where used. Preserve original files and note transformations. This prevents source ownership from becoming unclear when you assemble a draft weeks later. Avoid a note system that mixes copied text with your analysis without markers. An accurate source trail is easier to build during research than to reconstruct shortly before submission.
Use collaboration within its permitted role
Study discussions can help you understand ideas, but each assessed task has its own requirements about individual work. Clarify those boundaries before sharing data, calculations or drafts. Keep a record of relevant contributions where appropriate. Explain your own choices and complete the parts that must be individual yourself. If a friend gives a substantial solution, do not disguise it through superficial rewording. Ask the teacher how to proceed. Authorship concerns the underlying work and reasoning, not simply whether the final sentences differ from someone else's.
Work through a source-confusion repair
Imagine a student discovers a paragraph in their notes without knowing whether it was copied or written independently. The student searches their recorded sources, locates the original passage and marks the quotation correctly. They then write their own analysis from the evidence, with an appropriate citation. If the source cannot be recovered, they do not submit the ambiguous paragraph as original. This illustrative repair demonstrates a useful habit: uncertainty about ownership triggers a source check before the material enters the assessed draft.
Keep tool use and support transparent
Follow applicable rules for writing tools, translation, coding support and AI. Record relevant use and acknowledgement as required by the school and IB policy. Generated text or other AI material included in assessment requires appropriate acknowledgement, while the assessed work still needs to represent your own contribution. Verify any cited source or factual claim rather than assuming a tool's output is accurate. Keep drafts and research records that explain how the project developed. Transparency is strongest when it is built into the process, not added as a vague final statement.
Audit the work before authentication
Review passages where external material or assistance contributed substantially. Check that quotations are marked, paraphrases and borrowed ideas are cited, and non-text material has appropriate attribution. Confirm the final work matches the task's support rules. If you identify a problem, speak with the teacher while there is time to resolve it honestly. Preserve the final submitted version. A clean audit does not require pretending the work was completed in isolation; it requires making legitimate sources and support visible while retaining your own authorship.
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Official references
This is an original practical guide from IBvia. The examples are illustrative; your subject guide, assessment year and school instructions determine the requirements.
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