The student evaluations for this course are among the very best I've ever seen and it was clear that once the students adjusted to the difference in structure and assignments, they learned a great deal. Use primary source material. Primary sources set the foundation of many fields and yet all too often we assign textbooks to undergraduates, including academically-talented students. Most honors programs encourage faculty to make frequent and extensive use of primary sources. For example, psychology classes might read Freud or Jung, students in history or political science courses might read The Federalist Papers or do archival research, and science students could read Watson and Crick's article in Nature that first described their discovery of the double helix.
Team teach and offer interdisciplinary courses.
Team teaching can be particularly effective with academically-talented students. The interplay between the faculty members and the opportunity to hear more than one opinion or point of view can challenge students to think even more critically about the issues being discussed. Team teaching can be especially effective if faculty from different departments are paired around themes or topics. Honors programs often involve students in the teaching process by putting them into teams and having them present some aspect of the course content. Some honors colleges even offer student-taught courses as part of their regular curricula.