Students often have difficulty grasping the principles of dimensional tolerances and frequently fail to recognize that dimensioning practice has a significant impact on the tolerance of part features. This observation may be attributed to several factors, not the least of which are changes in prior student education and life experiences and increasing pressure in academia to add course content to cover new technologies, sometimes at the expense of fundamental concepts. This paper presents some back-to-basics instructional methods designed to help students improve their understanding of tolerances, including a description of some hands-on instructional activities that were implemented in the Engineering Technology program at Illinois State University. (Contains 4 figures.)