Oral Defense in AI-Assisted Programming: A Focused Assessment Method

A constructed exchange about a pagination boundary

Illustrative exchange — constructed for this article; not student data or classroom research. Learning outcome: the student can explain and test the boundary behavior of cursor-based pagination.

Lecturer: “Show me the test that tells you the final page has been reached. What response does it expect?”

Student: “The API returns a null next cursor, so the client should stop requesting pages. The test checks that it stops after this response.”

Lecturer follow-up: “If the response contains no items but still includes a next cursor, should the client stop? Explain how you would decide from the API contract.”

The answer may support a bounded claim about how the student responds to this test and contract question in this conversation. It does not establish authorship, independent work, general competence, whether AI was used, or understanding across other programming topics. The lecturer still interprets it against the stated outcome and the rest of the assessment evidence.

Offer an equivalent route when speech is not the right evidence

A timed conversation can put weight on spoken fluency, language, anxiety or the interaction format. Where that format is inappropriate, a student might instead annotate the relevant test and API contract, demonstrate a changed pagination case, or respond in writing to the same new condition. The alternative should address the same learning outcome and follow the institution’s accommodation process; it need not reproduce the oral format.

If oral interactions are used across a cohort, tell students what kind of questions to expect, use the same learning criteria, and prepare assessors to ask neutral follow-ups. Sampling or short milestone conversations may reduce the time involved, but workload and consistency should be checked locally rather than assumed.

Interpret the response narrowly

A response is evidence from one prompt, at one time, in a particular setting. A correct explanation can be relevant to an outcome, but it is not a complete account of the student’s learning. A hesitant response may also leave uncertainty without proving that the student lacks the capability.

For the broader question of what selected evidence can support about student responsibility, see Student Ownership. For deciding which process records are worth using alongside an explanation, see Process Evidence.