Grade the process, not just the essay.
PowerNotes builds the structured research habits the IB requires and gives you visibility into whether students are actually developing them. From the Extended Essay to every IA that follows it.
Integrates with your LMS
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IB Students
A research process the IB actually rewards
Build your EE, IA, or TOK essay with a structured workflow: sources, highlights, annotations, and your developing argument, all in one place. Arrive at the draft stage with your thinking already organised. -
EE Supervisors & Teachers
Extended Essay and IA support
Spend less time decoding what students actually read and more time on the thinking they developed. PowerNotes shows you the research behind the work. -
IB Coordinators
Programme-wide research literacy
Standardise the research process across the whole cohort. Give every student the same structured starting point, regardless of which subjects they're taking. -
Heads of Department & Admins
School-wide implementation
Bring a consistent research framework to your school, from MYP through Diploma. Works alongside your LMS and library without adding another login.
The IB expects structured research. Students improvise.
The Extended Essay requires students to demonstrate a research process, not just a finished paper. The Internal Assessment asks for evidence of genuine inquiry. Theory of Knowledge demands engagement with sources and ideas over time.
In practice, most students approach all of this the same way: open tabs, copy-paste into a document, lose the citation, start the outline the night before the draft is due. PowerNotes gives them a structure that actually matches what the IB is looking for, and gives you a window into whether they're using it.
PowerNotes helps build the skills IB assesses
Students save articles, journals, and databases with a single click. Every source is stored with automatic citation metadata. They can't accidentally lose a citation or forget where something came from.
Students highlight key passages and attach notes directly to their sources, not in a separate document they'll forget to cross-reference. By the time they've read their sources, they have the raw material for their argument already organized.
Annotations pull into a structured project outline, organized by topic or argument strand. Students can see their whole argument at once before they start writing, in their own words, with sources already attached.
Students connect their PowerNotes workspace to Claude. Every AI conversation starts from their own annotated sources, not a blank prompt. AI helps them develop their argument, not generate one from nothing.
The activity log timestamps every source saved, highlight made, and note written. Students share it with their EE supervisor as evidence of genuine research engagement — which is exactly what the IB requires and what Criterion D assesses.
See the research, not just the result.
The most common frustration for EE supervisors is not knowing whether a student actually engaged with their sources or just produced a polished document with no visible process behind it. PowerNotes gives you the process.
MLA, Chicago, APA. Done before they start writing.
Every source a student saves in PowerNotes automatically captures citation metadata. Students format in their required citation style with one click. Bibliographies export alongside their project outline, so the Works Cited page is ready before they submit, not assembled in a panic after.
No more lost sources. No more accidental plagiarism from misattributed quotes. No more asking students where something came from.
See the student process.
Trace the AI.
The IB's position on AI is evolving, and the schools navigating it best aren't the ones with the most restrictive policies. They're the ones where students understand how to use AI as a research tool grounded in their own work, not a shortcut around it.
When students connect PowerNotes to Claude, every AI conversation is grounded in their own annotated sources. Every interaction is logged. You can see what questions they asked, what the AI responded, and how that shaped their final work. That's not a policy. That's transparency.
Your students learn to use AI responsibly. You get the visibility to assess whether they did.
What people who study this are saying.
"If you can create an atmosphere where students are invested in learning, they are not going to reach for a workaround. They are not going to plagiarize. They are not going to copy, they are not going to dodge the work. But the work has to be worth doing on some level, beyond getting the grade."
"Part of the worry about how students might use a tool like ChatGPT is rooted in an apparently pervasive belief that students would much rather cheat than do the work. I still believe students want to learn, but this means giving them something worth doing."
"Educators would do well to find a way not only to live with the technology but also to incorporate it into our pedagogies. Training students to become good critical readers and effective editors is an ambitious goal — but it is also a challenge we would do well to embrace sooner rather than later."
See what PowerNotes looks like in an IB programme.
Book a free demo and we'll walk you through how IB coordinators and supervisors are using PowerNotes to improve the quality of student research and reduce the time they spend chasing students for process evidence.
Book a demo — it's free