\n
Learning objectives are at the very core of the instructional design process, and rightly so. Without them, how would we know what content and activities to include in our courses? Unfortunately, the learning objectives are often poorly defined, making it hard to determine if learners are meeting them. Enter: Bloom’s Taxonomy!
\n
Benjamin Bloom, the creator of Bloom’s Taxonomy, specifically designed this classification system to help instructors, and instructional designers, clearly define learning objectives—and, in turn, create courses that meet learners’ needs. Let’s take a closer look at how this instructional design principle applies to e-learning.
\n
What Is Bloom’s Taxonomy?
\n
In their original work, Bloom and a committee of educators identified three domains of learning: cognitive (mental), affective (emotional), and psychomotor (physical). However, when most people think of Bloom’s Taxonomy, they think only of the cognitive domain.
\n
The cognitive domain is divided into six categories, each representing a cognitive skill level. Each category is associated with a set of verbs, or cognitive processes, that describe what learners should be capable of doing:
\n
\n- Knowledge: recognize, recall, list, name, memorize, define, locate, identify
\n- Comprehension: interpret, illustrate, summarize, explain, match, paraphrase
\n- Application: apply, choose, organize, draw, generalize
\n- Analysis: analyze, differentiate, classify, categorize, distinguish
\n- Synthesis: create, plan, produce, construct
\n- Evaluation: evaluate, judge, criticize, compare, appraise
\n
\n
Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Learning Objectives
\n
Once you know the expected cognitive skill level for learners to achieve and the specific knowledge or skills the course covers, you’re ready to write your learning objective.
\n
How? Simply combine the subject (the learner), the verb (what learners must know how to do), and the object (the knowledge they need to acquire).
\n
For example, “At the end of this course, learners will recognize the five cognitive skill levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy.”
\n
Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Design Activities
\n
As you’re designing your course activities, it’s important to refer back to the learning objectives and let the expected cognitive skill level guide your choices. If your learners need to take the course content and apply it to their jobs, you could build a scenario that allows them to practice doing that. If they simply need to recognize a list of terms, a multiple choice question could be just the thing.
\n
Let’s look at the six cognitive skill levels again, this time with an example of a suitable learning activity:
\n
\n- Knowledge: a multiple choice question asking learners to identify the correct answer from a list of terms.
\n- Comprehension: a free-response question asking learners to explain their understanding of something.
\n- Application: a scenario in which learners need to make decisions based on the information they learned.
\n- Analysis: a sorting question where learners classify terms or concepts into the appropriate category.
\n- Synthesis: a free-response question that asks learners to outline a plan of action.
\n- Evaluation: a scenario where learners compare and contrast the options available.
\n
\n
As you can see, you can use certain activity types for more than one skill level. It all depends on how you design those activities. And this is only the beginning—there are many more activities that you can design to help your learners achieve each of these cognitive skill levels.
\n
Resources
\n
Hopefully, this article has you thinking about how you can apply Bloom’s Taxonomy to your instructional design process to create clear, concise learning objectives and design activities to support those objectives.
\n
Want more instructional design tips? Check out these articles:
\n
\n
How do you use Bloom’s Taxonomy to design e-learning? Share your ideas in a comment below!
\n
And remember to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).
This is a good introduction to Bloom's Taxonomy and I will refer to this in the research thinking for the next version of the Padagogy Wheel (no it is not a spelling error :-)
The Padagogy Wheel started as an info graphic to show teachers how to put pedagogy first then choose the technologies to serve it. It has grown into so much more with each new version. The latest is V4.0 with twice the resources of earlier versions in 19 languages . There have been 139,324 posters of the English version downloaded from my blog in the last 15 months. Recently I released the Spanish and German versions with Chinese almost out and 15 more languages being translated at the moment. I am confident that if you are a teacher or a learning designer you will find it interesting. It extends what is being talked about in this article and gives teachers a visual flowchart reminder of the best way to approach building transformative learning experiences.
Here are a few links for those interested:
1. \"In Support of Excellence” is my blog.It has a great many resources for the Padagogy Wheel and Immersive Learning or Simulations.There is also articles on Articulate Storyline and Studio 13.
http://tinyurl.com/alsltblog2. \"The Padagogy Wheel is not just Apps\" this is a succinct explanation of what the Wheel is about.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1smdg1r3. A Learning Module developed in Studio 13 explaining more about how to get the best use out of the model.
http://tinyurl.com/padwheelintroILMThe Padagogy Wheel is all about edtech integration, the meshing of technology, thinking and student motivation. It uses Blooms Taxonomy as the architecture. Please look at it in the context of what is being said in this article it will improve your learning design.
What do you think?
This is a good introduction to Bloom's Taxonomy and I will refer to this in the research thinking for the next version of the Padagogy Wheel (no it is not a spelling error :-)
The Padagogy Wheel started as an info graphic to show teachers how to put pedagogy first then choose the technologies to serve it. It has grown into so much more with each new version. The latest is V4.0 with twice the resources of earlier versions in 19 languages . There have been 139,324 posters of the English version downloaded from my blog in the last 15 months. Recently I released the Spanish and German versions with Chinese almost out and 15 more languages being translated at the moment. I am confident that if you are a teacher or a learning designer you will find it interesting. It extends what is being talked about in this article and gives teachers a visual flowchart reminder of the best way to approach building transformative learning experiences.
Here are a few links for those interested:
1. \"In Support of Excellence” is my blog.It has a great many resources for the Padagogy Wheel and Immersive Learning or Simulations.There is also articles on Articulate Storyline and Studio 13.
http://tinyurl.com/alsltblog2. \"The Padagogy Wheel is not just Apps\" this is a succinct explanation of what the Wheel is about.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1smdg1r3. A Learning Module developed in Studio 13 explaining more about how to get the best use out of the model.
http://tinyurl.com/padwheelintroILMThe Padagogy Wheel is all about edtech integration, the meshing of technology, thinking and student motivation. It uses Blooms Taxonomy as the architecture. Please look at it in the context of what is being said in this article it will improve your learning design.
What do you think?
