It's pretty amazing how much there is to learn from other students; it's way beyond most of my formal education.
Today, I learned more about 3-D rendering of first-person games than I had ever even thought to wonder, all from a 45 minute conversation with another student. It seemed wildly more interesting and practical than so much of what I learn in classes, that it makes me wonder if the CS department should, instead of having so many classes, have a few classes and a ton of little student-run workshops. It would be like the ACM talks, but all the time. To graduate, you'd have to both attend a certain (large) number of workshops and demonstrate your understanding (with little projects or bigger projects tying multiple concepts together), and also teach some number of workshops. It would be a choose-your-own-adventure major.
Sure, it would stand a snowball's chance in hell of being accredited, but it would make the experience so much richer for those of us who actually want to learn. Granted, we can do that some now (like I did today), but we'd have so much more time for it in my system. I know it would not be for everyone, but with a large group of interested people, I think it would be fantastic.
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