The paper presents a teaching regime and evaluation criteria for a general education course in biology. The purpose of the course is to provide students with biological information to help them understand problems facing humans and some of the social and ethical aspects of these problems. Using input from students concerning what constitutes a good learning environment, the course is designed to give students the opportunity to control much of their own success in the course. The paper also examines how students respond to the variety of evaluation methods. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)