Yesterday in a classroom I was trying to explain the rationale of our courses and it happened to me to sketch some sort of learning lines. The sketches seemed to be of some use.
Here you have a somewhat refined versions.
In conventional classroom work, activities are time constrained. There is a tight schedule and a sort of photo finish with final ranking. Time constraining prepares the students for modern hectic life, this is true, however the learning process is vastly sup-optimal.
I could have written Learning on the ordinate but the term is abused. I prefer Familiarity with the subject of the course, it’s more akin to what I have in mind.
The idea here is to forget about time and focus on a sort of quality constrain. Students wander through the topics/activities suggested by the teacher who is available to help and give advices.
Of course, everyone starts from its own preexisting Familiarity with the subject but everybody will finish around the given mininum familiarity, with a certain margin to do better if they like. That is, the teacher informs a student, when asked: “You are at C, if you want to improve your grade, you can work further”. It is the student who determines the end of the course.
What about time?
Everyone has its own time, that’s why I’ve dropped the time constrain. If you require more time to achieve the minimum required familiarity with the subject, it does not means that you are worse than others, it simply means that this is the time you need given all the other activities and problems (may be headache …?) you may have in your life. These contingecies should not hamper the quality of your learning.
Andreas Formiconi 
This is very true! I wish everyone take account of it. Especially in an academic environment.