Freedom in the selection of course content

The paper is a case-study of an innovation, as seen through the eyes of the innovator. It describes a study of the desirability and feasibility of offering undergraduates freedom to select the course content in one subject of early study. Small groups of first-year students were offered such an opportunity, in one subject only, during a full academic year. On the basis of the lessons learnt from the first trial-run, a revised plan for the following session was prepared with hindsight, and some confidence in the likely effectiveness of the proposed improvements. But the second run did not prove to be noticeably better than its predecessor; it simply had different weaknesses and different strengths. So a further radical review of the experiment was necessary, leading to the third developmental run (which was still in progress at the time of writing)

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