Examines existing research and instructional design theories for guidelines that encourage a deep approach to learning, i.e., meaningful learning, critical thinking, or independent learning. Highlights include sequencing strategies and elaboration theory, linking concepts, student misconceptions, changing the attitudes of teachers, and projects…

An examination of student papers from three universities on the same tasks revealed that expository writing tasks were less demanding cognitively than argumentative writing tasks and that argumentative writing tasks were less demanding than speculative tasks. Another finding was that when students were able to translate a generalized task into…