SEAQUAM’S ACADEMIC INTEGRITY/HONESTY POLICY

What is Academic Integrity/Honesty?

Academic integrity involves

• Acting with integrity and honesty by producing your own authentic work

• Avoiding any behavior that gains one student an unfair advantage and negatively impacts the results of other students

• Following the rules for all examinations as set out by a teacher, a specific department, the school administration or any other organization for which examinations are given within on behalf of Seaquam

Examples of academic integrity

• Acknowledging as honestly and accurately as possible the ideas and work of others, even when the source cannot be stated with absolute accuracy

• It is alright for students to work collaboratively or supportively

collaboration can occur when students discuss ideas for a paper or brainstorm sources that they might use to research a common idea

collaboration can also occur when students are assigned to work on a group project in which the individual roles are decided upon or defined by the group or teacher

Examples of academic misconduct

• Using the ideas of another person within your work without citing the source from which those ideas were gained (plagiarism)

• Copying or paraphrasing from websites, books, journals, essays or any other source without citing the source of origin of the information (plagiarism)

• The use of photographs, graphs, data or computer programs without citing the source from which the information is taken (plagiarism)

• Allowing your work to be copied or reproduced in some fashion by another person (collusion), including copying off others’ tests or allowing another to copy your test

• Handing in work completed by another person and taking credit for it (collusion)

• Missing class to gain additional preparation time (eg. for tests) or falsifying an excuse, in any fashion, for an absence

• Turning in the same work for more than one assessed component of a given class, or turning in the same work for assessment in two different classes.

• Copying and pasting from Chat GPT or other artificial intelligence agents OR using content from an artificial intelligence search without sourcing it

Avoiding Academic misconduct

• Teachers must make students aware of what constitutes academic dishonesty and establish expectations for academic honesty in their classrooms

• Teachers will model examples of academic honesty in the classroom (eg. citing/referencing sources for information used in class)

• Students must cite all sources for ideas, notes, quotations, visuals, etc, in footnotes and/or a formal bibliography as required by each assignment

• As requested by individual subject teachers, students will submit assignments to turnitin.com to screen for possibilities of plagiarized information

• Teachers are expected to confirm, to the best of their ability, that students have submitted authentic work for assessment

• Students are expected to treat each assessment opportunity seriously and take the time and initiative to complete original work for each assessment in each course.

Consequences for Academic misconduct

When a student engages in academic dishonesty, SOME or ALL of the following consequences will apply:

• A mark of zero on the assignment that involves examples of academic dishonesty

• Notification of the parents that an academic dishonesty offence has occurred so that such behavior can be more closely monitored in the future

• Notification and/or referral to the appropriate administrative officer (by grade assignment)

Both students and parents of IB students must also be familiar with the International Baccalaureate Organization's Academic Integrity Policy.  The IBO's Academic Integrity Policy outlines the standards that must be adhered to when students are researching and presenting work within the IB Diploma Programme of studies. 

 **Please note that the use of AI for assessed work will be considered academic misconduct.  Students must ensure to turn in work that is original and authentic.  AI tools should not be used other than to brainstorm ideas and should not be used to cut down word count or to generate content of assessed work.

The IBO's Academic Integrity Policy can be found on our IB Forms page.  Please ensure that you review this regularly as consequences for violating these policy's can result in not being awarded credit for reserch or work that is produced as party of the Diploma Programme or as part of individual IB   courses.