Academic Integrity and the ECE Honor Code

As a member of the University of Illinois academic community within Electrical and Computer Engineering, I pledge to conduct myself in accordance with the highest standards of academic integrity and to avoid conduct that may lead to suspicion of infractions.

Academic integrity violations come in many forms including plagiarism, cheating, and facilitating cheating, to name a few. We’ll use the word “cheating” generically in this discussion. Cheating devalues your own degree and that of others. It is unfair to other students in the class. It sacrifices long-term educational goals for perceived short-term gains.

It is your responsibility to understand the forms of illicit behavior described in the Student Code. For each course, you should read and reflect on the policies governing the homework, coding assignments, laboratory exercises, quizzes, exams, and so on. If the course syllabus or web page does not already list a policy, you should ask your instructor to publicize one. Assume that Artificial Intelligence (generative or not) is not acceptable in the course unless informed otherwise. Get clarification in advance regarding any situation that you feel may be regarded as uncertain.

Professional behavior goes beyond simply "not cheating." You are urged to read the IEEE Code of Ethics and the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct for detailed description of standards set by Electrical and Computer engineering professionals. In these codes, you will find commitment to the integrity of your colleagues, for example, “To strive to ensure this code is upheld by colleagues and co-workers” in the IEEE code and “Computing professionals should insist on and support high-quality work from themselves and from colleagues” in the ACM code (emphasis added). Everyone is encouraged to report observations of cheating to your professor. Unchecked, cheating will inflate the assessments of unscrupulous students over the honest students as presented to employers, research professors, or graduate school.

Cheating in classes is a serious problem, as it devalues the hard work of honest students. While student motivation for ethical violation is often grade-driven, the instructor’s response is driven by the desire for integrity. The course staff, the department, and the University of Illinois have the right to expect their students to maintain the highest professional standards and to represent each in a manner befitting of our reputation. The sanctions applied are therefore not only to correct the course grade, but to disincentivize that ill-formed motivation for cheating.

On our campus, course instructors have very wide discretion in determining what constitutes cheating in their classes and what sanctions will be applied. The typical sanctions listed below are provided by our department for reference, but the instructor may deviate from them using judgment on what is deemed prudent to stem cheating in their course. The ECE department suggests using these guidelines:

• For the first academic integrity violation in a course, whether that be on a written assignment, online assignment, coding assignment, laboratory assignment, quiz, exam, etc., the instructor should consider a sanction up to zero on the assessment plus reducing the final course grade by one letter grade.
• If that first academic integrity violation in a course assessment potentially carries a significant portion of the letter grade directly or indirectly (perhaps worth 30% or more of the total grade and/or possibly replacing the lowest grade in some category), the instructor should consider a sanction up to failure in the course.
• If there are two or more instances (separate FAIR cases) of academic integrity violations in the same course, the instructor should consider a sanction up to failure in the course.

An instructor has the flexibility to assess the details of the situation and apply a penalty outside of those stated above. Note that all cases in which a student has been found to have committed an infraction of academic integrity are reported to the department, to the student's college, and to the Senate Committee on Student Discipline.

For multiple academic integrity violations in different courses, in the same course in different semesters, or in particularly egregious cases, the University of Illinois Senate Committee on Student Discipline will consider sanctions including disciplinary probation, suspension, or dismissal from the university. Students have been dismissed from the university for academic integrity violations.

Often students defend cheating on homework by pointing to a strong quiz or exam performance. This incorrectly inflates the importance of academic assessment over academic integrity. Be trustworthy in small things, so others will consider you trustworthy in big things!