academic honesty

I would like to take this opportunity to remind all students what academic honesty (AH) is , and why its important. I have taken all material in quotations, directly from the IBO policy document on Academic Honesty

The IBO policy on AH very much focuses on the “values and skills that promote personal integrity and good practice”. From the learner Profile under Principled, can be found….  “(IB Learners…) act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice and respect for the dignity of the individual, groups and communities. (IB Learners…)  take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences that accompany them.”

Two key issues related to academic honesty are authenticity and intellectual property.

Authentic work is that which is based upon “the candidate’s individual and original ideas”. You are allowed and encouraged to look for and apply the ideas of others, but these must be fully acknolwedged. When asked to design and conduct an experiment, there is nothing wrong with using an established methodology. However, you must reference the source and adapt the experiment to better suit your circumstances and your specific research question.

Intellectual property consists of many forms, but ultimately comes down to the notion of what somebody created, belongs to them. One must observe national and international laws in using those things created by others. (And ignorance is no defense in the eyes of the law).

The biggest issue for students and academic honesty can be found in poor paraphrasing. A piece of work has been read and a student wants to incorporate those ideas into his / her work. There are generally two options here, insert and indent / or read and re-write in your own words (but still giving acknowledgment to the author). To that end, the student very much needs to take the salient points from what has been read in a journal / text / website and put it into their own. Be aware that putting into your own words does not now mean that are now YOUR ideas / facts and you still have to reference.

The only time you do not have to footnote is if the facts are considered to be “common knowledge”, such as the Earth revolves around the Sun etc. When in doubt, footnote. You will no doubt find that you footnote a lot and you will not have many ideas in an essay. If you did you would be publishing by now.

And finally, Getty images now allow all their images to be embedded legally to social media without threat of litigation. Read about it on The Guardian website

On Youtube I have found the following videos that discuss paraphrasing and academic Honesty. They are not all bells and whistles, but worth watching to efectively learn how to paraphrase and better understand Academic Honesty

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[youtube]U7dy5GlXyHk[/youtube]

From the second video, above check out the following website that helps you analyse how effective you have been with paraphrasing.  http://handymandanonline.com/Paraphrasing-tool.html