In particular, the areas of planing, student involvement in learning, attention to individuals and provision of feedback on student performance are common to all three lists of good teaching practices. The link between effective university learning and high quality teaching is summarised in the following table. As can be seen in the above table, flexibility is a key component of high quality teaching. Its value is across all of the characteristics of effective learning. A summary of its key intersects with effective learning illustrates why it is so valuable.
Flexibility supports situation learning by offering different situations for individual students.
This is important because students bring different backgrounds and levels of understanding to the learning process. Flexible approaches to teaching and learning allow for more appropriate linkages between the information being delivered and the situations in which students can apply the information. Interaction between students and staff, students and each other, and students with their learning materials are essential to effective learning. Again, flexible approaches allow this interaction to occur in ways which best suit the student in terms of when, where and how the interaction takes place. The more flexible the teaching and learning process, the greater the opportunity for this interaction to occur in ways which support effective learning.