Academic Integrity is an essential part of Rocky Mount High School and the IB program. In order for students to learn to succeed in the world beyond high school and beyond IB, they must learn to adhere to strict expectations for and policies of honesty. Having a strong moral compass can make the difference between success and failure in school, at the university and in life. We take this very seriously, and we want to convey only the highest expectations for honesty in all areas of IB and school.

Thank you for taking honesty and integrity seriously!

NOTE: The honor code applies to all disciplines in the IB Diploma Program at RMHS: Language A, Language B, History, Biology, Chemistry, Math, ToK, C.A.S., electives, and the Extended Essay.  Any malpractice is a serious offense and is subject to serious consequences as determined by administration, including removal from the program.   Students enrolled in pre-IB courses are held to the same expectations.  

How to Avoid academic misconduct

  • Be sure that the work you are submitting is your own.

  • Consult with your teacher if you have doubts that your work may violate academic integrity.

  • Document all resources used to complete assignments.

  • Use Draft Coach in Google Docs to perform a plagiarism check on your work before submitting it.

  • Do not share your works, tests, assignments, etc. with other students.

  • Report suspected academic dishonesty to your teacher or the DP Coordinator.

How will RMHS model academic integrity?

  • Foster a culture of academic honesty through fair and consistent implementation of this policy.

  • Communicate this policy to all stakeholders (students, parents, faculty).

  • Teachers will teach students proper citation practices and how to use Draft Coach to check for plagiarism in written work.

  •  Provide secure testing practices.

  • Monitor and investigate allegation of academic misconduct.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY STATEMENT 

Students need to be cognizant of what is right and what is wrong. Honesty is one of our highest  values. If we are to develop students as contributing citizens of society, we as teachers need to ensure the moral honesty of  our students and instill academic integrity. We define a lack of academic integrity to be dishonest or deceitful behavior  shown by students who gain an unfair academic advantage through, but not limited to, some of the following methods;  plagiarism; copying another's work when it is not explicitly encouraged by the teacher; providing details of a specific test  or quiz before, during, or after the event; the use of unauthorized aids on tests, such as cheat sheets or programmed  calculators or downloading material on an mp3 device such as an ipod; or recycling/reusing a previous paper or project of  one's own or another's without the explicit consent of the teacher.  

The following information is an excerpt from the Honor Code information in the Student Handbook. Please consult the  Handbook for the comprehensive statement and procedures. 

Academic misconduct

Violations of academic integrity (misconduct) include but are not limited to:  

1. Submitting work from a previous class in a current class (old essays, old lab reports, old projects, old  notebooks, past tests, etc.). 

2. Using any graded material (notebooks, tests, essays, lab reports, homework, or other graded assignments from  another student, previous or current) without teacher’s permission and direction. 

3. Manufacturing or creating data or sources. 

4. Discussion of the content of tests or evaluations to other students outside of class or between classes until every  student has been tested. 

5. Dividing the tasks in a group activity (without permission) instead of working collaboratively to complete the  activity. 

6. Acquiring copies of tests before the actual testing period so as to have an unfair advantage during the  evaluation. 

7. Using notes or information from any unauthorized source, including but not limited to information written on  desks, person, pieces of paper (cheat sheets), water bottles, backpacks, or entered into graphing calculators or  other devices. 

8. Looking at another student’s work during a test. 

9. Any form of communication during an evaluation (passing materials, whispering, talking, signaling, or  mouthing words of other students.). 

10. Taking a test or assessment for another student. 

11. Refusing to comply with conditions of the Rocky Mount High School testing environment. 

12. Any act that can give unfair academic advantage to a student, his/her grades, or his/her records. Additional descriptions  of academic frauds are as follows: 

CHEATING

  • Using crib sheets; pre-programming a calculator or downloading material on an mp3 device such as an ipod;  using notes or books during a closed book exam.  

COPYING ON A TEST

  •  Looking at other unsuspecting students' exams and copying; copying in a complicit manner with  another student; exchanging color-coded exams for the purpose of copying; passing answers via notes; discussing answers in  exam.  

PLAGIARISM

  •  Fabricating information and/or citations; copying from the Internet or submitting the work of others from  professional journals, books, articles and papers; submitting other students' papers or lab results or project reports and  representing the work as one's own; fabricating, in part or total, submissions and citing them falsely.  

  • The use of online translators to complete assignments in Language B courses.

ACTS OF AIDING OR ABETTING

  • Facilitating academically dishonest acts by others; unauthorized collaboration of  work; permitting another to copy from exam; writing a paper for another; inappropriately collaborating on home assignments  or exams without permission or when prohibited.  

UNAUTHORIZED POSSESSION

  •  Buying or stealing exams; failing to return exams on file; selling exams; photocopying  exams; any possession of an exam without the faculty member's permission.  

SUBMITTING PREVIOUS WORK

  • Submitting a paper, case study, lab report, or any assignment that had been submitted  for credit in a prior class without the knowledge and permission of the instructor.  

TAMPERING WITH WORK

  •  Changing one's own or another student's work product such as lab results, papers, or test  answers; tampering with work either as a prank or in order to sabotage another's work.  

PREVENTATIVE MEASURES 

All IB teachers will use Turnitin.com as a tool to combat plagiarism. All Students will be required to upload  major papers to this website, or any other papers deemed necessary by the teacher. At any time, teachers should be able to verify references by pulling them up on the Internet (for web references), or books  (confirmed through Amazon.com). If the teacher is unable to confirm references, it shall be referred to the student to provide  evidence of such references. 

PERSONAL HONOR VERIFICATION 

Each student will hand write the following pledge on designated assignments prior to handing it in to the instructor, “I  have neither given nor received any unauthorized assistance on this assignment” followed by the student‘s signature.  

DISCIPLINARY ACTION 

Depending on the severity of the violation, disciplinary action may range from a warning or a referral upon confirmation of an honor code violation: 

  • The teacher notifies the student and parent/guardian within two school days of discovery of the Honor Code Violation and  the classroom consequence; a grade of zero will be assigned to the assignment if the teacher is able to prove that a violation occurred.  

  • The teacher reports the violation to the Assistant Principal for Instruction via the Honor Code Violation form; The Assistant Principal meets with the student to discuss the Honor Code violation and impose administrative sanctions; The Honor Code Violation s filed in the student's' permanent academic record in the counseling office 

  • The student meets with the administration to further discuss the incident where administration will decide the consequences per the RMHS handbook.

The use of AI Technology

"The IB will not ban the use of AI software. The simplest reason is that it is the wrong way to deal with innovation. Over the next few years, the use of this kind of software will become as routine as calculators and translation programs. It is more sensible to adapt and teach students how to use these new tools ethically.

AI tools do not threaten the underlying principles of what the IB values. Students are expected to research a topic, and with today’s technology that likely means starting with an internet search. In assessment, the IB does not (generally) award marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar. Where communication is assessed, we will need to think carefully what this means, but it is more than just having a well-written paragraph and requires considering the key messages for the audience. AI may provide a starting text, but the student will need to understand how and why to refine the text to improve its impact.

AI tools do not represent a crisis in education or assessment. However, in a world where everyone can use software to write newspaper articles, business reports and/or emails to friends, it is a game changer in terms of the skills students need. Instead of being able to produce complete essays, reports, and so on, students need to know how to get the best out of AI tools. For example, to edit text to personalize it, and most importantly, to recognize the inherent bias in what is produced because of the bias in the programming and the material that the AI tool has been trained on from its creators.

The IB aims to avoid joining the “arms race” between AI tools that claims to be able to tell the difference between AI and human authors. It is better to ensure that students can speak about their work with their teachers rather than accusing them of misconduct based on increasing small differences in the predictability of their word choices.

However, students need to 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 any 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. 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.

It is not realistic to prevent the use of these tools as they will rapidly become commonplace, but the IB believes that schools should explain ethical behaviour when using these tools, and why they often are not the most useful piece of software. Students should be reminded that the text currently produced by AI tools is often repetitive and formulaic, and most likely not of good enough quality to be awarded high marks. 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.

Teachers may have experienced problems when a student has been given an example essay that too closely matches what they are being asked to do. Consciously or unconsciously, the student can start to copy the content of the essay rather than using it to create their own work. Therefore, during the writing or creative process of any piece of work, the IB expects teachers to use the same processes they would use whenever they suspect that the work submitted is not the student’s own and is not identifiable by plagiarism detection software—for example, work written by a third party or paid service." -IBO

Revised 6/28/23