The IB Middle Years Program provides students from all countries with skills and educational experiences which are foundational to success in middle school, high school, post-secondary education, and beyond.  With the increased use of the Internet, there are many readily available sources of information easily accessible to students.  According to the Academic Honesty guide published by the IBO, “many students incorrectly believe that because the Internet is in the public domain and largely uncontrolled, information can be taken from websites without the need for acknowledgment.”  This is far from the truth, and students must know that all work turned in for assessment, be it for Middle Years Program, high school, or university classes, “must be based on the candidate’s individual and original ideas with the ideas and work being fully acknowledged” (IBO 4).  Failure to acknowledge the work of others could result in not earning credit, as well as other consequences.

Definitions: 
IB regulations define malpractice as “behavior that results in, or may result in, the candidate or any candidate gaining an unfair advantage in one or more assessment components.” 

Malpractice includes:

• Plagiarism:  The representation of the ideas or work of another person as the candidate’s own.
• Collusion: The support of malpractice by another student, as in allowing one’s work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another.
• Duplication of Work: The presentation of the same work for different assessment components and / or Middle Years Program requirements.  However, it is perfectly acceptable for a student to study one aspect of a topic for one course and another aspect of the same topic for assessment in another course.

Other:
Any behavior that gains an unfair advantage for a candidate or that affects the results of another candidate (for example, taking unauthorized material into an examination room, misconduct during an examination, or falsifying a Personal/Community Project).

Consequences:
In IB classes, academic misconduct will result in a loss of credit for the assignment for which the academic misconduct occurred and, of course, a disciplinary referral.  Repeated offenses may result in suspension.