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Deep Learning

How Can We Foster Deep Learning?

The same students report employing both deep and surface approaches to learning, adapting their strategies according to the context. While we can’t guarantee that any student will learn deeply, we can increase the likelihood that this will occur. How?

Build campus-wide support: Kinzie and Kuh (2004), reporting on Project DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practice), note that all campuses involved in this examination of effective educational practice had in common a “widely shared sense of responsibility for educational quality and student success.” Smith and Colby (2007) concur: “Engage all members of the learning community in intentional, substantive, and inclusive dialogue about student learning.” Such campuses are more likely to foster student engagement—highly correlated with college satisfaction, persistence, and positive learning outcomes in numerous studies (e.g., Pascarella and Terenzini, Kuh, Astin).
Design courses around deep understanding of core concepts: Wiggins and McTighe (1998), Fink (2003), and Bain (2004) provide guidance for course design that helps promote deeper learning.
Employ pedagogies of engagement: Teaching techniques that help students connect with each other and get them involved actively in learning course material encourage deeper approaches to learning. Such techniques, often referred to as “pedagogies of engagement,” include active learning, collaborative and cooperative learning, and Problem-Based Learning (PBL).
Balance challenge and support: Research into the psychological state referred to as “flow” (full absorption, deep concentration and motivation, and high degrees of satisfaction) shows that such states are most likely to occur when learners encounter appropriate challenges as well as opportunities to enhance skills. See Scherer (2002) and Shernoff, et al. (2003).
Employ appropriate assessment measures: Marton and Salio (1976), pioneers of research into deep learning, note that “students adopt an approach [to learning] determined by their expectations of what is required of them.” Even if students are told that a professor’s primary goal is that students will come to understand the big concepts in a course, if these same students are subjected to exams that focus on memorization of numerous details, their learning strategies will likely shift toward those that will enable them to do well in such a context—cramming and memorization, for example. Ramsden (1992) argues that assessment methods are the greatest influence on student learning.

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