IBDP: Extended Essay

All Extended Essays must be authenticated by both the student and supervisor before submission to the IB eCoursework system. Supervisors must...

• Confirm the essay is the student’s own work and free of academic misconduct; if authenticity is in doubt, it must not be uploaded.
• Verify authenticity by monitoring progress, reviewing drafts, checking sources, and discussing concerns with the student.
• Be responsible for ensuring students understand academic integrity, authenticity, and intellectual property, and that the essay cannot overlap with other DP assessments.

All EEs must be submitted through Turnitin, where they will be checked for plagiarism and the use of AI.

Dos

• Work Gradually: Start your work early and develop it over time. IB coursework isn’t designed to be finished in one night.
• Understand Your Work: Be ready to explain your ideas and process. This shows that the work is truly yours.
• Cite Sources Properly: Always give credit when you use someone else’s ideas, whether you’re quoting or paraphrasing. Clearly mark your own ideas versus those from others.
• Match Your Skills: Make sure your final work reflects your abilities and what your teacher expects from you.
• Use AI Responsibly: If you use AI tools, clearly state which tool you used, the prompt, and the generation date in your citations and bibliography.
• Use Helpful Tools: Basic tools like spell checkers and bilingual dictionaries are fine unless you're in a Language B course where sentence structure and vocabulary use are being graded.
• Seek Support When Needed: If you have access and inclusion needs, use approved tools and resources to help you succeed.

Don’ts

• Procrastinate: Don’t wait until the last minute to start your work. Rushed work is harder to prove as your own.
• Hide AI Use: Never use AI tools without clearly citing them. Misuse can lead to serious consequences.
• Break Language Rules: Don’t use grammar or language tools in courses like Language B where your language skills are being assessed, and never submit translated essays as original work.
• Submit Work That’s Not Yours: If you can’t explain how you did the work, it might not be considered authentic.
• Ignore Teacher Feedback: Don’t assume your work is ready without showing progress and getting feedback along the way.

What do I do if I am accused of using AI?

• Is the work shared digitally with your supervisor and can the supervisor access evidence (notes and drafts) of how the essay evolved over time?
• Have you been meeting with your supervisor and discussing your ideas?
• Can you discuss and elaborate on the information in the essay?
• Have you been citing your sources?
• Have you been using only basic tools to fix your spelling or grammar (large chunks of text have NOT been put into AI and rewritten)?
• If you are a Language B student, have you avoided using AI?

If you answered "yes" to the questions above, the school will have enough evidence to prove your work is your own. If you can't answer "yes" to the above questions, you may be risking your IB diploma. Reach out to your librarian, EE coordinator, or DP coordinator for help.

From the IB Academic Integrity Policy pages 53-55

What does the IB expect when a teacher checks the authentication box to confirm that work is the student’s own?

• The teacher has seen the student develop the work over a period of time—IB coursework is not designed to be completed in a single evening. This is the best approach in ensuring that the work belongs to the student, and it also encourages best practice in writing coursework.
• The student can explain their work sufficiently—to give confidence that it has been created by them.
• The student is clear when they are quoting other people’s ideas and when they are claiming an idea or conclusion as their own work—this is the expected way of referencing.
• The teacher confirms the quality of the final piece of work is in line with what they would expect the student to be able to produce.

Teachers are the best placed to know what a student is capable of and when a piece of work appears not to have been written by that student. If teachers are not convinced that the work is the student’s own, it must not be submitted to the IB. 

How should teachers guide their students when using AI tools?
Students should be informed of the following rules.

• If they use the text (or any other product) produced by an AI tool—be that by copying or paraphrasing that text or modifying an image—they must clearly reference the AI tool in the body of their work and add it to the bibliography.
• The in-text citation should contain quotation marks using the referencing style already in use by the school and the citation should also contain the prompt given to the AI tool and the date the AI generated the text. The same applies to any other material that the student has obtained from other categories of AI tools—for example, images.

Using software to improve language and grammar
There are software programs available to help authors improve the quality of the language they use, from simple spell checkers to complex tools that rewrite sentences. IB assessments usually do not evaluate the quality of language or spelling so there is limited benefit in using such tools.

• The exception is in language acquisition, where marks are awarded for sentence structure. In these subjects the use of such tools is not permitted.
• The IB awards bilingual diplomas, and universities and schools look at the language subjects that are taken in for proof of being able to work in that language. Therefore students are not permitted to write essays in one language and then translate them to be submitted to the IB in another language. For subjects other than language acquisition, the use of spell checkers and bilingual dictionaries is acceptable.
• The IB will always consider the use of software to support access and inclusion requirements for students. Please refer to the Access and inclusion policy for more details.
• The IB allows students to use basic tools to support their spelling and grammar when this is not what is being assessed.

Confidence in IB results
The IB and IB World Schools are partners in maintaining the value (currency) of IB grades to be trusted by institutions. The IB needs to trust schools to do due diligence, and schools can trust the IB to take its responsibility seriously in the interest of their students.