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At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in fall 2025, instructors in a large data-science course suspected that students were answering attendance questions from outside class. After they contacted more than 100 students, repeated wording in some apology emails led the professors to suspect that AI had drafted them. The instructors discussed the incident with the class; reports say no disciplinary action was taken at that time.
How the professors spotted suspected fake attendance
The incident happened in IS 107: Data Science Discovery, taught by Karle Flanagan and Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The Daily Illini reported that the course enrolled 1,200 students across two sections, met three times a week, and counted attendance and participation for 4% of the course grade. (The Daily Illini, October 31, 2025)
Students used the professors’ Data Science Clicker app: they scanned an in-class QR code and answered questions. Instructors noticed that the number of responses seemed higher than the number of students they saw in the room. According to The Daily Illini, app records suggested some responses came from outside class, including from as far away as Chicago. The professors contacted more than 100 students whose responses they believed came from elsewhere and warned that repeated conduct could be referred to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. (The Daily Illini, October 31, 2025)
Ars Technica’s account says questions had a limited response window of around 90 seconds and that instructors examined refresh behavior, device IP addresses, and server logs. Those operational details are reported by Ars Technica, which attributes some investigation information to The New York Times; they are not independently established by the other account cited here. (Ars Technica, October 30, 2025)
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Why the apology emails raised an AI suspicion
After the contacts, students sent apology emails. Fagen-Ulmschneider said the instructors noticed repeated language, including “I sincerely apologize for my misuse of the Data Science Clicker.” He recalled seeing another email with the same phrase, and said the repetition led the instructors to believe that some messages were likely not written by the students themselves. (The Daily Illini, October 31, 2025)
Ars Technica reported that 80% of the apologies were almost identically worded and appeared AI-generated. That is the publication’s estimate of the similarity; the accounts do not describe a technical authorship test that verified who or what wrote each message. Similar wording can prompt a reasonable question, but it does not establish the authorship of every email or prove that every student contacted had submitted a false response. (Ars Technica, October 30, 2025)
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What happened after the class was addressed
The professors discussed the issue with students on October 17, 2025. Ars Technica reported that no disciplinary action was taken then and described the response as a warning and a “life lesson.” The Daily Illini reported that students had been warned repeated conduct could be escalated to the college. The reports do not provide an official university disciplinary record or an outcome for each student contacted. (Ars Technica, October 30, 2025; The Daily Illini, October 31, 2025)
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A student photographed a slide from the class discussion and posted it to X. The Daily Illini reported on October 31 that the image had 28 million views and more than 4,000 reposts by then; those are historical figures from that date, not current engagement counts. (The Daily Illini, October 31, 2025)
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What the incident does—and does not—say about AI in class
The instructors’ reaction was about the suspected attendance responses and the similar apologies, not a blanket rejection of AI for learning. Fagen-Ulmschneider told The Daily Illini, “We take academic integrity very seriously.” He also described AI as potentially useful in moderation, comparing it to candy, and gave generating study questions as an example of a possible educational use. (The Daily Illini, October 31, 2025)
This remains a report about one course and what its instructors said they observed. It does not establish how common attendance cheating or AI-written apologies are at the university or across higher education, nor does it settle the circumstances of each student’s case.
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