Class today involved a collaborative effort.  Each student had a list of 7 commands that they had to research and essentially become SME’s (Subject Matter Experts) on.  I had diff, echo, exit, hostname, less, ls, and head.  None of the commands were particularly difficult, but there are intricacies to all of them.  The miniproject was really helpful because it allowed each person to research a few commands and give details while in class.  However, the disadvantage is that if someone neglected to complete the entire assignment, or couldn’t find a command, then there was a gap in our knowledge.  Fortunately with the awesome power of the internet, we were able to figure out every single command.

In all the miniproject was highly useful.  With only 2 risks, people not doing the work or not showing up, it appeared to be relatively successful.

Based off what I have seen in others posts, it appears that those that have experience with unix, or at least the terminal, tended to view this as being effective, while those who have no experience at all did not see it as being anywhere near as useful.