enhancing the effectiveness of direct forms of higher education teaching is a key challenge for many institutions especially since problembased learning is not feasible in all circumstances a number of teaching attributes such as organisation expressiveness enthusiasm and rapportinteraction have been found to have a positive relationship with indicators of student learning and student persistence in reality there is no dichotomy between problembased learning and traditional teaching and learning approaches policymakers and practitioners would benefit from a better understanding about which specific practices are effective for fostering different skill sets