Overview
- Roberto Serrano says a closed-book take-home midterm produced an average of about 96 with 40 perfect scores and that a teaching assistant found a midterm question produced the same solution in ChatGPT.
- Serrano then held an in-person final that saw the class average fall to roughly 48.6, with only 59 of 86 students attending and 22 of the 27 students who dropped having earned 100 on the midterm.
- The take-home format was given as an accommodation after a deadly Dec. 13 campus shooting and enrollment in Serrano’s section rose from about 30 students to 86 this semester.
- Brown says multiple academic leaders contacted Serrano in May, that he provided formal materials to the Standing Committee on the Academic Code on July 8, and that the committee is now reaching out to students to adjudicate cases individually.
- A separate university GenAI committee has urged schools to avoid broad punitive bans and to focus on teaching, a stance that highlights wider debates about detectability of AI, reassessing take-home tests, and how sanctions should adapt.