Bloom's Taxonomy

The week was a bit challenging for me as I was in New Orleans all week at the Blackboard Conference. I learned a lot and found the learning to be a great complement to this class, however, it was difficult to keep up with everything as they kept us very busy at the conference. In class this week, we had a meaningful activity of taking some of our course objectives and tying our class activities to them using Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom's Taxonomy is such an important piece for any class because it's too easy to fall into an "assign reading and then test mode", especially in an online class. By really analyzing each activity and making sure that we have activities for each level, we provide the students with a much richer learning experience. Creating this week's taxonomy table gave me the opportunity to categorize some of my class activities and really think about their value in meeting the course objectives. I enjoyed looking at my classmates' tables and learning how they each apply Bloom's Taxonomy in their particular disciplines.

Now for fun, see Homer Simpson's Application of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Example of Bloom's Taxonomy in Action:

Class: Educational Psychology (for Faculty)

Bloom categories	Learning objective verbs	Activity
Knowledge (recall, list, define, identify, collect, label)	The students will define four different educational theories. The students will identify their personal educational philosophy.	Students watch short videos on four different educational psychologists. Students take the Philosophy of Adult Education Inventory to identify their own philosophy.
Comprehension (summarize, describe, interpret, predict, discuss)	The student will summarize an educational theory. Students will discuss educational philosophies.	In a wiki, students choose an educational psychologist and summarize his/her theory. In the discussion board, students discuss which philosophy they most closely identify with and why.
Application (apply, demonstrate, illustrate, classify, experiment, discover)	Students will demonstrate how they will use multiple intelligences to reach their students.	Students demonstrate how they will use at least 4 of the 8 multiple intelligences in a class activity.
Analysis (analyze, classify, connect, explain, infer)	Students will compare and contrast different educational theories.	Students compare and contrast the different educational theories in small group activity.
Synthesis (combine, integrate, plan, create, design, formulate)	Students will design learning activities for their particular class.	Students design learning activities that incorporate different learning styles.
Evaluation (assess, recommend, convince, compare, conclude, summarize)	Students will summarize their learning with a final project and written philosophy paper.	Final Project: Students use the information on educational theories, multiple intelligences and learning styles to create a lesson plan for their particular class. Lesson is presented to the class with opportunities for feedback from their colleagues. Using what they have learned about educational theories, multiple intelligences and learning styles, students write their personal teaching philosophy.