"Traditional" course design, based conventional lecturing and high-stakes assessments, is considered low-structured course design. On the other hand, daily and weekly active learning exercises, combined with more numerous low-stakes practice exams, are considered crucial parts of high-structured course design. It is hypothesized that high-structured courses, while being more resource intensive, produce better results in comparison to low-structured courses. Some common components of high-structured courses are:

• Socratic lecturing
• Ungraded active-learning exercises
• "Clicker" questions
• Practice exams
• Class notes summaries
• Reading quizzes
• In-class group exercises