A few quickly-formed comments in response to this debate and particularly to clarify an issue...
[quoting Hart, 21 Aug 95] The depressing truth is that no matter how comprehensive, logical, delightful, and engaging we make the learning materials, they will be filtered through the disposition of the student--what Marton, Saljo, Ramsden, Biggs, and others have identified as "Surface," "Deep," and "Achieving" approaches to learning.
A predominantly "Surface" learner will quickly tire of hypertext links that do not provide ready answers; an "Achieving" learner with well-developed "study skills" will probably skim the lovingly created artwork and music track in order to download the structure diagrams. It is only the "Deep" approach in which the purpose of learning is seen to be the construction of meaning by the learner and where curiosity is its own reward.
What the research in this area does show, in fact, is that many learners pick up and apply strategies that characterize each of these approaches (deep, surface, achieving), as befitting the nature of the task (task perception). There are other influences acting on students' choice and application of learning strategies, but few as powerful, it seems, as task perception. Interestingly, although students may be described as predominantly exhibiting a particular style of learning (e.g., showing preferences for visual rather than textual decoding), learners by and large, use a mix of learnt strategies typifying surface, achieving, or deep approaches, in response to a task. This is why the demonstration of factual memorization as a learning strategy, cannot be seen as evidence of a "surface learner"--it is simply evidence that a learner is using a surface learning strategy in response to a particular task (e.g., reviewing for a closed-book exam).
While the "deep achiever" is the ideal student, she is not the norm at Universities. Some students are born "surface," but most have "surface" thrust upon them.
Learners are not born into approaches. Whilst there are as many styles of learning as there are learners, and these are part of the learner's predisposition (character), approaches to learning need to be learnt.
Staff at this university produced an exploratory CD-ROM on Japan containing a wealth of historical, geographical, economic, and social material. The animated interface represents a trip along an ancient pilgrim's road from Kyoto to Tokyo. We observed students working with the CD-ROM in the Library--they ignored the interface and used the Hypercard "Search" function to get at "facts" to use in their assignments.
This, I would venture, is because these assignments encourage such a strategy.
None of this should surprise us. Undergraduate university teaching methods do not, as a rule, encourage deep approaches to learning nor the construction of meaning by the learner.
This is the nub of the (or at least, a) problem in tertiary education--and one that we have discussed on this forum before. I guess we must accept that it is a problem or issue that, despite the pointers offered by Laurillard and others in the recent past as to how we might cope with it, will continue to occupy us.
The holidays are over. Let's put our old dissertations back in the drawer and get the show back on the road.
OK, Ian, my dissertation is now back on the shelf!