In email dialogue this fall, Marton, Entwistle, and Ramsden all emphasize the primary importance of an assessment system that truly reflects the level of understanding faculty want students to achieve. The key thing to understand about approaches is that they arise from the student's perception of the teacher's requirements. Faculty are instrumental in forming those perceptions, he says, because research indicates that different forms of teaching are perceived differently by students, and thus tend to elicit different approaches. The list of features associated with surface approaches given above implies alternative strategies.
Specific implementations prove as various as contexts and learners.
Four key classifications, however, offer a check list of general features to consider in developing strategies and cultivating environments which help deep approaches thrive. Intrinsic motivation remains inextricably bound to some level of choice and control. Courses that remove these take away the sense of ownership and kill one of the strongest elements in lasting learning. Doing in itself isn't enough. Faculty must connect activity to the abstract conceptions that make sense of it, but passive mental postures lead to superficial learning.