Blooms Taxonomy

Overview

Learning objectives are used in courses to inform learners what they will be able to do at the end of instruction. Program accreditation usually uses Bloom’s Taxonomy concepts to determine whether learners achieve course and program expected learning outcomes. If learning objectives, course activities, and assessments are properly aligned, then the learning outcome measurements (assessments) prove that. Course objectives are generally stated as follows:

You will be able to

• Identify each state in the United States on the map
• Associate the capital of each state in the United States

Notice that the verbs “identify” and “associate” are things that can be observed and measured to determine levels of student achievement.

Bloom’s Taxonomy for Course Design

Bloom’s taxonomy provides a clear formula for thinking about writing course- and module-level learning objectives.

Well-written objectives inform students:	What they should study and practice How they will be assessed
Well-written objectives guide the instructor:	Assessment strategies Teaching strategies
Well-written objectives tell the instructor and accreditation agencies:	If teaching strategies worked. If assessment strategies worked.

Bloom’s Level of Learning

Benjamin Bloom published a study in the 1950s on student learning and found that many college students were not prepared to think past memorization and shallow comprehension. The study proposed that stating learning objectives in specific ways could move student learning to higher levels.

Cognitive Domain for Bloom’s Taxonomy

This chart shows Bloom’s six levels of cognitive learning. Remember, understand, and apply are lower-order thinking skills. Analyze, evaluate, and create are higher-order thinking skills.

The third column, “Related Behavior (Verbs),” suggests verbs we can use to state our learning objectives. Occasionally, there is an overlap between categories and verbs.

Category	Definition	Related Behavior (Verbs)
Create	Judging the value of material or methods as they might be applied in a particular situation; judging with the use of definite criteria	adapt, assemble, collaborate, combine, construct, create, design, develop, facilitate, formulate, generalize, hypothesize, justify, manage, modify, plan, prepare, propose,
Evaluate	Creating something new by combining parts of different ideas to make a whole.	blend, build, change, combine, compile, compose, conceive, create, design, formulate, generate, hypothesize, plan, predict, produce, reorder, revise, tell, write
Analyze	using a general concept to solve problems in a particular situation, using learned material in new and concrete situations	analyze, compare, contrast, diagram, differentiate, dissect, distinguish, identify, illustrate, infer, outline, point out, select, separate, sort, subdivide
Apply	Using a general concept to solve problems in a particular situation, using learned material in new and concrete situations	apply, adopt, collect, construct, demonstrate, discover, illustrate, interview, make use of, manipulate, relate, show, solve, use
Understand	Understanding something that has been communicated without necessarily relating it to anything else	alter, account for, annotate, calculate, change, convert, group, explain, generalize, give examples, infer, interpret, paraphrase, predict, review, summarize, translate
Remember	Recalling or remembering something without necessarily understanding, using, or changing it	define, describe, identify, label, list, match, memorize, point to, recall, select, state

How Does the Chart Work?

The verbs in the chart above are action verbs. They indicate what the student will do to demonstrate that learning has occurred. For example, if you want the student to think and perform at the “analyze” level, you would use one of the suggested verbs from that level. For example:

You will be able to

• Contrast democracy with oligarchy

To achieve the objective, the student must analyze the two political systems.

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy underwent a revision in 2000. See Anderson and Krathwohl’s Taxonomy 2000.

Designing Instruction and Assessments with Bloom’s Taxonomy

Now that we know how to write learning objectives using the taxonomy, we can use Bloom’s to target student products or write test questions at higher levels.

• Task-Oriented Question Construction Wheel (Polygon) (PDF)
• Bloom’s Taxonomy (Krathwohl’s Revised) Planning Worksheet (Word document)

The idea of Alignment of Objectives, Class Activities, and Assessments

How do you know if a student has reached the learning objective? If we state that “the student will be able to do X,” how do we know if s/he achieved it? Whatever we state in the objective should be measured in the assessment, whether on test questions or student products. Furthermore, class activities should support the objectives and assessments.

• What if the class as a whole did not assess well, i.e., they did not achieve the expected learning outcome? What’s wrong?
• Things you might consider:
  • If there is a problem, where is it? Were the instructions in the overview page not clear?
  • Were the objective statements “measurable”
  • Did the assessment strategies accurately measure objectives?
  • Did the learning activities support objectives?
  • Do you need to supply examples of student work to model what you expected?
  • Were the checklists or other study guides not clear or present?
  • Were rubrics too complicated or absent?
  • Were the assignments not clear?
  • Other?

When the class assesses well, there is probably a good alignment of objectives, class activities, and assessment. This is called “closing the loop.” Nota Bene: This is exactly what SACSCOC looks for during program evaluations.

There must be “coherence” between the objectives, teaching/learning strategies, and assessment outcomes. Think of it as a check-and-balance system to measure teaching and learning effectiveness.

Last updated: 10/19/2023