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I took a class from John White at UCONN. He gave us a couple dozen CS papers at the start of the year. Every class had 3 paper presentations, 20 minutes each. A random student was picked for each presentation.

So you had to read and understand each of the upcoming 3 papers because there was a random chance you would have to present one of the three.

The result is that you eventually read all of the papers well enough that you could give a 20 minute presentation.

There were no grades. It was pass/fail.

It was one of the best classes I ever took.



I had a high school professor do a somewhat abridged version of that for our final. It was impossible to spend an adequate amount of time on all three so you really had to focus on two and hope you got lucky.

Easily the most stressful final I've ever taken.


But the person who presented the very first paper won't have to care about the rest of the semester right? Or can you get randomly picked multiple times?


There were only 10 students allowed in the class. So you got picked about every 3rd class (sometimes more than once per class).


I wish I could do that to my students, but I have an average of 120 students on my classes each semester.. :/




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