The Virtual Pet Oral Defense:

Rethinking Assessment in the Age of AI

When AP Computer Science teacher Ms. Roselyn Baronia noticed her students leaning on AI to write code they couldn't fully explain, she redesigned her assessment of their learning. Instead of grading only the finished product, she created an oral defense: after building a "virtual pet" coding project in groups, students presented their work and answered questions from a panel of teachers and peers, justifying their design choices, walking through their debugging process, and explaining exactly how AI shaped their code.

This website provides access to some of her materials from the virtual pet project, including a timeline, a lesson overview, student examples, and a rubric.

This also website accompanies a 3-part interview with Ms. Barnonia that describes the oral defense that she created, the challenges she faced, and what she learned in the process: “I Felt Like I Was Losing My Role in the Classroom” (Part 1); "AI is a tool that should help us, not something to depend on" (Part 2); and “Be Honest, Grow With Your Students” (Part 3) [insert links].