Another major concept of Ausebel's theory focuses on meaningful learning. To learn meaningfully, individuals must relate new knowledge to relevant concepts they already know. New knowledge must interact with the learner's knowledge structure. Meaningful learning can be contrasted with rote learning which also can incorporate new information into the knowledge structure but without interaction. Rote memory is fine for remembering sequences of objects (i.e. lists of structures) but does not aid the learner in understanding the relationships between the objects. Meaningful learning, therefore, is personal, idiosyncratic and involves a recognition of the links between concepts.
Both rote and meaningful learning may be achieved no matter what instructional strategy is used (Novak and Gowin 1984). Either reception learning (passive listener with teacher-directed agenda) or discovery learning (active learning where the learner chooses information to be learned) may result in meaningful learning. Therefore, its not necessarily how information is presented but how the new information is integrated into the old knowledge structure that is crucial in order for meaningful learning to occur.
A third key idea of Ausubel's theory is that concepts are of different depth. That is, concepts can range from the very general to the very specific. Furthermore, general concepts include (subsume) less general concepts which include most specific concepts. As such, concepts can be progressively differentiated by their level of specificity. In order to learn meaningfully, concludes Ausubel, the learner must discern the level of new concepts and then place them within progressively inclusive levels of specificity in their knowledge structure.