In one of the boldest educational experiments of our time a Canadian medical school has successfully abandoned exams, lectures, and given students the power to direct their own learning and even remove poor tutors. The aim in this case is to train better family doctors.

This dramatic cinema verite film follows medical students at McMaster University through a number of real and simulated medical problems. The students diagnose and treat road accident casualties in hospital emergency rooms, distraught and depressed housewives, and a brain damaged 25-year-old girl who is unaware of her true condition.

Tonight's Horizon shows how the McMaster experiment is challenging the basic ground rules of education by showing that lectures and exams are not necessary for effective learning.