 Deep and surface approaches to learning are actually approaches that students themselves and research way back in the 1970s actually told us. Those are terms that students in the research used. So it's not something that professors and educational theorists came up with. The students have told us that they adapt their approach to learning based on the context in which they're learning, based on their perception of the learning environment. Surface learning is when they take a very rote approach to learning. They're not interested in meaning and understanding. They want to perhaps give back to the instructor what they think the instructor wants them to give. And so it's a question of learning by rote, memorizing, paying very little attention to challenge in situations, just do the minimum effort, but in the minimum effort that you can in order to get through the course. A deep approach to learning is when the student is motivated to go to the meaning, to understand what they're learning. And so it's not simply a question of memorizing. They themselves ask questions about things that they've encountered in the learning process. They are interested enough to realize that a deep approach requires them to be actively involved in the learning process, to participate by asking questions, by seeking answers themselves, and by really trying to look for deeper understanding. I'm a big believer in associative anchoring. So deep learning is anchored in association. So I will always go for understanding over memory, always. So I will privilege understanding over memorization, and quite frankly in the online environment memorization doesn't make much sense to me anyway. But I do privilege comprehension, understanding, application over memorization, fact-based discrete types of evidences, although I understand that we need to use discrete evidences early in order to get more complex and consolidated evidences later. In education theory, there's this distinction that's made between deep and surface approaches to learning. And the idea is that with surface approaches to learning, often it's this kind of cram for the exam, or for the assignment, or stay up all night getting the paper in, and then you don't remember it beyond that, right? Or you're just sort of in the same way that an iceberg just has this tip that sticks out, but then there's this whole bigger piece below that you don't really see. When students are engaged, or any of us are engaged in surface approaches to learning, we're just getting at that very tip of the iceberg. We're not getting at all of that really rich and really powerful stuff that's below. And so you want to get students to using more of the deep approaches to learning. And you can design a course in that way. And the way that you bring some of that into a course is to figure out ways to get students, not just reflecting on their learning experiences, but also engaged in what's often talked about in education theory as deliberate practice, right? Where they're not just doing it to do it, or they're not just doing it to get the paper done. They are engaged in actually practicing a skill and deliberately practicing that skill, thinking about what it is that they're doing and how to improve it. And that means often not just building those opportunities, but making sure that you're giving the kind of feedback that students need so that they know how to improve that skill as they go along and as they progress. Much like the Community of Inquiry Scale gives you a sense of this presence thing, there is a big scale, BIGGS, that is all about trying to gauge the level at which students are interacting with the course. And the biggest division is between the surface versus deep level. It is a very predictive scale. I've found in many cases that as a basic indicator, if you want to predict marks, this scale predicts them very well. Those with a deep approach learn much better and get much better marks. So once again, it provides a tool. And then when I try to do things like even the example of turning reward contingencies into flirting or something like that, you can get a sense of whether that makes people approach the material more deeply. You can look for changes in the orientation of the scale as a function of the assessment you use or what have you. So once again, it's another good formative tool, something I think every good instructor should be keeping an eye on as they make changes through a course. The same student can sometimes take a surface approach with one in one course and one professor and a deep approach with another. And that's because of the environment that they perceive exists in each of those courses. So how you design a course is critical. If you design a course where the learning outcomes are not explicit, then it does not give the student an opportunity to immerse themselves in the process. Also, the assessment is an important part of the design. We know how important assessment is to students. That's one of the first questions they ask. How are we going to be evaluated in this course? And they can, very early in the course, based on how you've designed the assessment, recognize what it is you want from them. Are you seeking a demonstration of learning? Or are you seeking regurgitation of information that you have provided? And so how you design the course, the kinds of activities that you engage the students in, the kinds of assessment that you develop for the course would impact the student's choice about what approach to use. It's a choice. And they make that choice based on their life.