Individual oral defense

The oral defense contributes 10% of the course grade. Its purpose is to verify that each student can take ownership of work developed with a partner and with AI assistance. It is not a memory test or a search for a surprise bug.

Format

• A 5-10 minute individual conversation.
• The defense may take place during a designated class period or through a mutually arranged office-hour appointment. Exact logistics will be announced in Canvas, with an equivalent option for students who cannot use an office-hour appointment.
• Individual, including for students who completed labs or the project in a team.
• No slides are required.
• You may open your submitted code, manifests, dossiers, and project report.
• External AI assistance may not be used during the defense.

The instructor will select one submitted lab artifact and one project decision. The conversation will sample from the following tasks:

1. tracing a privacy claim to code, configuration, and evidence;
2. explaining a failure’s root cause or defending a clean or insufficient-evidence finding;
3. predicting or implementing one small changed requirement;
4. identifying the most serious residual risk;
5. explaining one consequential decision involving AI assistance, if used.

The changed requirement is scoped to the submitted work. Students are not expected to write a new system or locate an unknown defect during the defense.

Rubric

Criterion	Points
Ownership and technical explanation	3
Root-cause and evidence reasoning	3
Transfer to a changed requirement	2
Residual-risk and AI-decision judgment	2

Discovering a mistake during the conversation does not by itself lower the score. Accurately revising a claim and explaining how to test or repair it is evidence of understanding.

Students with approved accommodations should contact the instructor early so that the format can be implemented accessibly without changing the learning objective.