AI Guidance from IB

Artificial Intelligence

The IB believes that artificial intelligence (AI) technology will become part of our everyday lives—like spell checkers, translation software and calculators. We, therefore, need to adapt and transform our educational programmes and assessment practices so that students can use these new AI tools ethically and effectively. The IB is not going to ban the use of such software but will work with schools to help them support their students on how to use these tools ethically in line with our principles of academic integrity.

Students should be aware that the IB does not regard any work produced—even only in part—by such tools, to be their own. Therefore, as with any quote or material from another source, it must be clear that AI-generated text, image or graph included in a piece of work, has been copied from such software. The software must be credited in the body of the text and appropriately referenced in the bibliography. As with current practice, an essay which is predominantly quotes will not get many, if any, marks with an IB mark scheme. If this is not done, the student would be misrepresenting content—as it was not originally written by them—which is a form of academic misconduct.

How Your Students Can Correctly Reference AI Tools

Some recommendations are as follows.

• Before writing a piece of work, students should find research material—it is entirely reasonable to use a search engine to do this. This research will give them ideas and help shape their arguments.

• Students benefit from having an example of a good essay to look at when drafting their own work. There is nothing wrong with this, although the student must be clear that they are only using it to understand what good essay structures and coherent supported arguments look like, not to copy sections of it.

• Students should be encouraged to ask the software research questions rather than the essay title, and then explore the sources it provides—ensuring they also explore the inherent bias of the results.

https://www.ibo.org/news/news-about-the-ib/statement-from-the-ib-about-chatgpt-and-artificial-intelligence-in-assessment-and-education/ 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lEHsHGgobbTChS56y5L861RLw6IVAj9t/view?usp=drive_link 

Remember that there are no hard rules when dealing with AI. Educators should use their discretion with each student. If in doubt, refer to the following key principles:

1. Did the student use AI to help them learn, if so then it is OK.

2. Did the student use AI to pretend they did something they did not, then this NOT OK.

In other words, if something is fundamentally not the student’s own work— according to the teacher—then it should be referenced. If they copied or paraphrased another source, for example, they need to cite the source. And if this means all the work is one long reference then they receive no credit for it when assessed against criteria that require understanding, analysis, evaluation, etc.

IB - AI in student coursework