This is absolutely awesome. I don't remember having an opportunity like this as an undergrad - what a great option to have for students!

This reminds me a lot of the work on inquiry as a framework. Students ask questions and that becomes the framework of the topic. There are also different levels of inquiry - structured, controlled, guided and free (swimming analogy). Different parts of a course for me at least have called for different types of inquiry. There's a book called Dive Into Inquiry by Trevor Mackenzie that's really good.