CEDA sponsors thousands of college debates and over a hundred tournaments each year. By tradition, a CEDA debate pits an Affirmative team of two students against a Negative team of two students.
Teams alternate sides from debate to debate.
A Critic or Judge from a third school will hear the debate and award the decision. Each team gets a set amount of preparation time to use before their speeches. NDT format is much the same but the time for constructive speeches is 9 minutes and rebuttals is 6 minutes. CEDA and NDT competition rests on tournaments. The host school then schedules a series of preliminary debates which take place all at once.