Online courses allow greater flexibility for students in how courses are delivered. This is a major reason students take these courses. Presented here are the first year instructor experience and student feedback for the development of a 'perpetual' course. The perpetual course model would in its final form allow students to enroll in a course at any time, and then have a window of time in which they are required to complete rather than a set school term. Learning within the course would be entirely self-paced. Instructors would be supported with software that could produce an up to date report on each student's progress through the course. This would allow for personalized support through course material. In the first year a prototype was run that did not have all of these elements, but was based on 16 modules in a typical first year general education Earth Sciences course. Minimal deadlines were required of the students. The course was designed to be almost fully self-paced and to allow students some choice in the order in which they would complete the material. Assignments were designed not only to address comprehension, but to allow student reflection on what elements were more challenging to allow them to better reflect on their learning. Major issues with the course were in dealing with students being at many different stages in the course material, addressing issues with students taking material in flexible order in designing the modules, and dealing with student lack of progress through the material with few hard deadlines.