This paper describes the early stages of the developments of Tracks, an initiative to create,implement and evaluate a new educational model where the structure of the education isdeveloped to give students the opportunity to create multi- and interdisciplinary competencies,meet their expectations and need for a more individualized study plan and shorten the leadtimes for changing the education to embrace new technologies. The new education model isbased on the creation of tracks with different themes lying between existing programs notbelonging to a specific department or school. The idea is to create individual and flexible studyopportunities by introducing Track-courses within the themes. These courses address specificchallenges that may be broad societal and profound research-driven. Tracks also include largeinvestments in Chalmers learning environment. The paper focuses on Tracks as a largechange initiative, strategies to manage the complexity of this change as well as developmentphilosophy and working methods in the early phases of the initiative. Change at universitieshas been discussed previously, but this is a unique opportunity to study how large change maybe managed over time, including both the content of the education and the learningenvironments. Through action research, where interventions may be done to influence theinitiative, it is possible to develop practical contributions for other universities in need of similardevelopment. The research has been conducted over approximately a year and includes datafrom interviews and action research, where the authors are the main people working with thisinitiative. The close contact with the data gives a unique understanding of how differentactivities within the initiative influence the outcome. Thus, this paper will contribute to theunderstanding of how large institutional change initiatives are facilitated by a flexible and agileapproach contrasting the traditional and somewhat slower university culture
