Newlane Academic Integrity Standards and Policies

At Newlane University, we are committed to academic integrity and expect our students and faculty to uphold these values in their work. Our approach to preventing plagiarism and cheating is designed to support our students’ learning journey and ensure fair assessment practices.

Understanding Plagiarism and Cheating

Plagiarism involves using someone else’s work without proper acknowledgment, whether by paraphrase or direct quotation. It is essential to understand and follow citation guidelines to avoid this.

Cheating includes giving or receiving unauthorized assistance on quizzes, examinations, or assignments. It occurs when a student seeks academic credit through dishonest, untrustworthy, or unfair means, which misrepresents their knowledge and abilities.

Our Approach

To maintain the integrity of our courses, every student must pass a final oral exam, known as the “Course Hearing,” to successfully complete a course. In each Course Hearing, the hosting faculty member will inquire into the student’s project. This is an opportunity to engage the student’s project in a different way than written feedback. This hearing also checks and ensures that students can authoritatively discuss and defend their submitted work. If a student cannot do so due to plagiarism or any other reason, they will not pass the Course Hearing and, consequently, the course. In the age of AI, traditional methods of checking for plagiarism, such as text searches and tools are no longer sufficient. Newlane’s Course Hearing, which requires students to discuss and defend their projects authoritatively in real time, represents a best practice for addressing plagiarism today.

Resources and Support

We understand that navigating citation guidelines and maintaining academic integrity can be challenging. Newlane University provides resources within courses and the Project Support Center to help students learn and review these guidelines. If you have questions or need further assistance, please reach out to Newlane Student or Academic Support.

Guidelines to Follow

To help you stay on track, here are some general guidelines:

• Complete all academic assignments on your own.
• Do not use unauthorized aids during exams or the Course Hearing.
• Properly acknowledge and cite all source material in your projects, papers, and assignments.
• Do not copy another student’s work or submit it as your own.
• Avoid copying anyone’s work from any source and submitting it as your own.
• Do not purchase assignments or completion services, as ownership through a transaction does not make the work yours in an academic sense.
• Do not copy quiz or assignment answers from the internet or others.
• Do not share your quiz or assignment answers with unauthorized individuals or groups.

By adhering to these guidelines, you can ensure that your work reflects your true abilities and learning. We are here to support you in your academic journey and help you succeed with integrity.

IDENTITY AND ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

By signing the enrollment agreement, students sign the following Identity and Academic Integrity Statements: 

Identity:

I verify that I am who I am presenting myself to be, and that I, and I alone will conduct all required coursework for which I am responsible for any course in which I enroll at Newlane University. 

Academic Integrity:

I affirm my commitment to the standards of academic integrity in the Newlane University community. I will be honest and truthful and will strive for personal and platform integrity at Newlane University — that I will be honest in my purported identity and I pledge to uphold the integrity of the learning platform so that it can be trusted to validate mastery by the individuals purporting to have mastered learning content. I recognize that in submitting any project, taking any test, quiz, or exam of any kind at Newlane University, I am implicitly affirming this pledge:

“On my honor, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work, nor am I aware of others doing so.”

Newlane University is committed to being a reliable, trusted worldwide resource and platform for verifying mastery of learning objectives. In order to maintain this trust requires the shared commitment of all community members to academic integrity. By this we mean that every community member is honest in their presented identity, and every community member completes their work and presents their work for other members of the community (e.g. a student turns in an assignment to be reviewed by a course professor) without unauthorized aid. It means that cheating is not tolerated.

In our commitment to academic integrity, we celebrate that it is better to not yet know a subject well, than to feign mastery of a subject prematurely. At Newlane University, there is very little downside to not yet having mastered one or more learning objective. It is a simple judgment by a course professor, who is also a resource to help community members identify pathways for mastery. This idea is captured in a tenet from our manifesto: 

Education should not be competitive or judged by other students’ achievements. Students should only be assessed on whether they have mastered the stated objective or ‘not yet’. Removing competition decreases the incentive for cheating or cutting corners.