The Higher Education Learning Framework has been created as a guide for organisations, teachers and students to help frame thinking about teaching and learning design in higher education.
Alexandra Osika, Dr Stephanie MacMahon, Associate Professor Jason M. Lodge, and Professor Annemaree Carroll from The University of Queensland’s Learning Lab explore each of the seven principles of learning through a series of short articles published as a collection in the Times Higher Education (THE) Campus.
The seventh principle, deep and meaningful learning, unpacks building learning on prior knowledge, going beyond surface understanding, and laying the foundations for transferring and using knowledge in novel contexts.
Traditional teaching approaches often begin with a focus on delivery of content for surface-level understanding, and students are frequently passively engaged. This is an issue for students not only when it comes to retaining the learning long term but also for understanding beyond a superficial level and recognising lessons’ wider impact. At the core of the principle of deep and meaningful learning is how educators can encourage students to shift from passive engagement with problems at hand to deep thinking and feeling about learning.
