A progress report on a research project directed toward facilitating deeper understanding of economic concepts at the university level is presented. The purposes of the project are to explore phenomena conceptualization and to investigate why some students are more successful at a learning task than other students. In the analysis of a microeconomics course, student comprehension of economic concepts and principles was assessed. Students were interviewed on basic economic questions before, during, and after participating in the course. Findings were evaluated over three semesters, with an experimental course in microeconomics instituted during the fourth semester. Characteristic ways in which students understood and misunderstood basic concepts such as opportunity cost, production and cost functions, and utility and costs are described. A preliminary conclusion is that student understanding of basic concepts would increase if learning was described in terms of the structural aspects of the learning process such as forgetting, remembering, problem solving, or adhering to a specific teaching method. (Author/DB)