Use Bloom's Taxonomy

Why is this important?

Using Bloom's Taxonomy as your write your learning objectives will help ensure your course moves students through different levels of cognition within appropriate scaffolds of learning. Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives proposed in 1956 by a committee of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom. Bloom edited the first volume of the standard text, Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goal. Needless to say, Bloom's taxonomy has been an important tool for educators for quite some time.

As you might imagine, Bloom's Taxonomy has been revised since it was originally created in the 1950s. There is now a Digital Bloom's Taxonomy  which is a wonderful resource for course developers and faculty who will be teaching courses online and incorporating a variety of educational technology tools. The video below outlines both the traditional Taxonomy as well as the Digital Taxonomy.

Varying Difficulty Levels: Quick Tips

1. Review your learning objectives. Compare the behavior verbs in your learning objectives with those provided by Bloom's. Pay attention to where your verbs fall within Bloom's Taxonomy. 

• • Do your objectives keep students in lower-levels when the course goals are asking students to think more critically?
  • Do your objectives align with your course classification? A 2000 level course is not likely to focus on as many high-level objectives as a 4000 or graduate level course. 

2. Think about the assessments you will use to measure the learning objectives you create.

• • Do they encourage critical thinking or are they focused more on students remembering facts? Be sure that the assessments you are incorporating align with the objectives you've provided.