Flexible learning can be achieved only by controlling the total learning environment specific to each discipline

Such an extension requires that the intrapersonal and interpersonal environment of students be explicitly addressed; that the research approach required by the paradigm not only be taught but also become an integral part of the disciplinary curriculum and learning process, so that through such processes the importance of addressing the needs of individual students comes to be recognised. Taking Kuhn seriously has the advantage that the community of practice becomes recognised and can be admitted to the curriculum implementation process. The university also needs to support the academic needs of individual students. For too long students have been faced with requirements limited to their cognitive understanding of a discipline: the thinking processes have become the sole concern of those determining the curriculum, objectives, assessment, etc. Once a total ecological approach is used, the social emotional, and activity or psychomotor needs of students can also be addressed. In addition, students need to be supported in all these modalities by individual, small group, and interactive socio-cultural strategies.

Universities need to reorganise their environments to more effectively support the learning behaviours, the collaborative, cooperative collegial processes that learning communities require. Flexible learning has to do all of this, it must recruit methods that suit individual students and lecturers, and must involve them in contexts that we know to be effective. Such approaches include cooperative learning, problem based and work based learning, situated and apprenticeship learning, all of proven effectiveness. Perhaps it is employment that drives the curriculum - hence the need to include work places, and the profession, in the alignment equation. It is sometimes claimed that the best universities are those that enable their lecturers to learn the most from students. The extended alignment procedure being proposed would seem to have a good chance of achieving such an outcome and thus increasing the academic capital of the university. It is certainly the case that students are still the universities most neglected resource.