This paper describes a design of a second-year, 20 ECTS credit course on imperative and object-oriented programming. The key design rhetoric is encouraging students to assume responsibility for their own learning, and to this end, elements from mastery learning and other teaching strategies are used in concert to construct an achievement-based system where students are put in charge of how and when they are examined. In addition to describing the elements of the course design, the paper reports on experiences from teaching in this format, and how the format has evolved over time.