DEEP LEARNING AND INFORMATION ORGANISATION

When encouraging students to engage in deep learning (see http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/deepsurf.htm) a critical concern will be to support them in the organisation of information.

Below is an excerpt from this article: http://www.unca.edu/et/br110698.html



"Bowden and Marton review the learning research literature to define what learning entails and to discover the elusive qualities which account for the different levels of learning that students demonstrate. What students learn, they find, depends most importantly on how they experience learning opportunities. At one extreme the learner experiences a text or an experiment as merely a sequence of ideas or events, without understanding the relationship of the parts to one another or to the whole. Asked to explain something they have observed or experienced, these surface learners frequently list the sequence of events -- "this happened, then this happened, then this happened." 'Learning' involves moving from a more superficial to deeper levels of understanding. Deep learning consists of the ability to organize information in a hierarchical order in which themes, subthemes, and patterns are supported with evidence and examples. The learner "discerns the main theme,..discerns sub-themes within the whole and examples by means of which themes are illustrated or illuminated"(31). Moreover, they suggest, deep learning not only reflects a richer, more complex understanding of the subject matter, but also that the experience of deep learning better equips the learner to excel in future learning opportunities because the learner can discern both familiar patterns and critical variations in entirely new surface conditions. Thus, learning at both the individual and collective level involves coming to see familiar phenomena in new ways, "thereby widening the world we experience"(17), (i.e., widening the range of variables whose causal effects we understand and ultimately allowing us to imagine greater variability than we actually experience)."