HIU's Academic Integrity Policy
Because Hope International University seeks to develop mature Christian leaders and scholars, the university is committed to the principle of academic integrity. Consequently, all forms of dishonesty, including plagiarism or cheating in any form, are wrong, undermine learning, and are contrary to the University’s educational objectives and the student’s best interests. The primary rule of academic integrity is that each member of the university community will do one’s own work, executed to the best of one’s own ability, exclusively for the assignment for which it is presented or submitted.
Plagiarism is “stealing” the unique ideas or the wording of another (whether from classmates, publications, or information retrieved from the internet) and then presenting those products as one’s own. Examples of plagiarism include cheating on examinations; copying others’ work; cutting and pasting from internet sources; using the words or ideas or sequences of argumentation presented or published by others without proper citation; and purchasing, renting, borrowing, or otherwise appropriating the research, projects, or assignments of others, and presenting them as one’s own work. Without permission from the instructor for which coursework is prepared, “self-plagiarism” is also a violation of academic integrity because a student has in such cases submitted previous work done for another class and assignment and represented it as original work prepared exclusively for an assignment in the class for which it is submitted.
It is also an egregious violation of academic integrity for students to offer for sale (or without cost) directly to other students, or through a “middleman,” papers, examinations, quizzes, or other academic products for submission by the recipient. Such violations are grounds for academic dismissal.
Violations of academic integrity result in the following consequences:
1. Zero (0) credit for the violated assignment. This is the standard penalty for a first violation.
2. Zero (0) credit (“F”) for the course in which the violation takes place. This is the standard penalty for a second violation, whether committed in the same course as the first violation or in a different, concurrently enrolled course, or in a course in a subsequent term of study.
3. Academic dismissal from the university. This is the standard penalty for a third violation, whether committed in the same course as the first violation or in a different, concurrently enrolled course, or in a course in a subsequent term of study.
Artificial Intelligence Generated Text
Developing technology has made Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools more readily accessible to everyone, including students. Hope International University asserts that student learning requires students to fully engage readings and other source materials, thoughtfully process the content and arguments of those sources, and construct their own evidence-based conclusions. In addition, student learning requires that the student’s analysis, evaluation, and conclusions in any academic inquiry must be articulated in the student’s own words, expressing the student’s own arguments and points of support for their conclusions. Therefore, when a student employs AI to generate written text, sequenced reasoning, invented documentation, arguments, or conclusions, the product is not the student’s own work, nor is it the product of student learning. It is instead a misuse of AI and a violation of academic integrity, subject to the consequences imposed for other violations of academic integrity published in the HIU Catalog section on Academic Integrity above.