By Margaret Cusson
Lately, I have been working on curriculum development through the Academic Quality Assurance process, whereby I am advising and working with units on the learning outcomes associated with their programs. Through this work, I have had to pull out Bloom’s Taxonomy on multiple occasions. Having worked in a teaching and learning centre for the past nine years, I have forgotten that not everyone is as familiar with this work and how helpful it can be in course, and now, program design. Benjamin Bloom (and a host of co-researchers), developed a classification of learning objectives within education that was meant to improve communication and alignment between the design of curricula and assessments of student learning. This work was primarily done in the 50’s and 60’s, and although still very relevant and useful today, it was revised somewhat in 2000. Due to its relevance and popularity, much informal work has been done that extends the usefulness of this taxonomy in different disciplines and, more recently, with the growing use of various technological tools in education.
Writing objectives and outcomes is an important part of the course design (and, also program design) process, but they are not easy tasks. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy can be very helpful in grounding them in particular cognitive and knowledge dimensions and establishing some expectations of learning for both the instructor and the students.
For example, the measurable, or ‘action’ verbs attached to each cognitive level is particularly helpful in writing learning objectives and learning outcomes.
Here are a few links that help to introduce this taxonomy, as well as some of the extended work that followed:
A revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing
A helpful step-by-step guide to writing learning outcomes using Bloom’s Taxonomy
A nice, visual representation, informally called the Verb Wheel or Bloom’s Wheel, that includes educational technology activities and assessments
Academic Resources:
Anderson, L.W. (Ed.), Krathwohl, D.R. (Ed.), Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Complete edition). New York: Longman.
Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals; Handbook I: Cognitive Domain New York, Longmans, Green, 1956.