Going Deep

• An excessive amount of material in the curriculum
• Relatively high class contact hours
• An excessive amount of course material
• A lack of opportunity to pursue subjects in depth
• A lack of choice over subjects and a lack of choice over the method of study
• A threatening and anxiety provoking assessment system

But while it is possible to structure "learning environments" (a phrase meant to emphasize the interaction of departmental and campus climate as well as curriculum, course design and so on) that encourage a deep approach, it can be tricky. In some experiments designed to foster deep engagement, students merely "technified" the probing questions and adapted themselves to a new way of parroting the "right" answer.

Ramsden — writing from Australia — emphasizes the delicate balance needed: "It isn't so much the specific teaching and assessment methods you use that make the difference to the quality of student learning, but the reasons why you use them and the way your students perceive them. The key thing to understand about approaches is that they arise from the student's perception of the teacher's requirements."

Faculty are instrumental in forming those perceptions, he says, because research indicates that different forms of teaching are perceived differently by students, and thus tend to elicit different approaches.

The list of features associated with surface approaches given above implies alternative strategies. Specific implementations prove as various as contexts and learners. Four key classifications, however, offer a check list of general features to consider in developing strategies and cultivating environments which help deep approaches thrive.

Motivational context: We learn best what we feel we need to know. Intrinsic motivation remains inextricably bound to some level of choice and control. Courses that remove these take away the sense of ownership and kill one of the strongest elements in lasting learning.

Learner Activity: Deep learning and "doing" travel together. Doing in itself isn't enough. Faculty must connect activity to the abstract conceptions that make sense of it, but passive mental postures lead to superficial learning. Interaction with others: As Noel Entwistle put it in a recent email message, "The teacher is not the only source of instruction or inspiration." Peers working as groups enjoin dimensions of learning lectures and readings by themselves cannot touch.

A well-structured knowledge base: This doesn't just mean presenting new material in an organized way. It also means engaging and reshaping the concepts students bring with them when they register. Deep approaches, learning for understanding, are integrative processes. The more fully new concepts can be connected with students' prior experience and existing knowledge, the more likely it is they will be impatient with inert facts and eager to achieve their own syntheses. In many ways — as Ference Marton suggests — this tide of research ends up affirming the primary importance of helping students learn how to learn, how to study, how to know themselves as learners. Study skills courses, however, do not do that; cultivating this awareness must become part of coursework itself. Students after all do not learn in the abstract, they learn something. Their approach — deep or surface — doesn't represent intelligence or character (or personality). It represents a relationship between the student and what he or she is trying to grasp.

On the encouraging side, Marton and Noel Entwistle join Ramsden in speaking of the importance of group work and problem-solving as means to fostering a deep approach. In the United States, these elements of reform have begun to have influence under various banners — "active learning," "cooperative learning," "problem-based instruction" — though, as yet, they seldom appear as part of a systemic and integrated approach on most campuses.