An individualized, self-paced curriculum at Temple University Dental School is being used to break the lock-step pattern of the lecture-oriented system and to help students reach the clinical learning environment more quickly. Freshmen begin work in periodontology with 12 programed lessons studied in a Learning Resources Center open 75 hours a week. Lessons consist of 35mm color slides, audio cassettes, and workbooks. Students take exams when they are ready and can repeat units without penalty. Clinical units, an attitudinal seminar, and optional problems are taken after completion of the initial units. Sophomores proceed through 13 lessons on periodontal pathology and clinical diagnosis, followed by clinical work on a co-therapist. A computer monitors the progress of each student and evaluation indicated that cognitive and clinical performances are high, and that student attitudes are positive and their self-concept improved. In addition, student-faculty contact has become oess threatening as it shifts to a one-to-one teaching relation rather than a purely impersonal evaluative one. The media used are deliberately kept simple, with total production costs for software for the first year and a half amounting to slightly more than $10,000. (Author/PB)