Marc-Oliver Pahl | A seminar run like a conference.
In 2013 I introduced a new teaching concept for the master seminar at the chair for network architectures and services at Technische Universität München. Christoph Söllner provided very valuable support in the realisation of the experiment.
The new concept is as simple as successful: we run the seminar like a conference with CFP, deadlines, staff members as TPC, students as authors, and students and staff members as reviewers.
As conference system HotCRP is used. This is the conference management system that was used for different SigComm events for example.
Our experiment in summer term 2013 went extremely well. The students were all well prepared, produced good papers, and did good moderation. The review process, the session chairing, the deadlines... Everything went fine. Due to the large success we will continue the new mode with more students throughout the next semesters.