Relevance of Bloom’s Taxonomy in digital learning (Part I)

Despite having been conceptualized many decades ago, learning pedagogies like Bloom’s Taxonomy are extremely relevant to the digital learning solutions being created today. In fact, what makes it all the more relevant is the fact that digital learning solutions are built on an accurate structure containing curriculum and learning objectives that define the entire content and learning flow.

Reference and understanding of Bloom’s Taxonomy is extremely relevant to the creation of learning objectives that form the very basis of digital learning programs. Developed in the 1950s, Bloom’s Taxonomy tracks the learner’s journey as he progresses from lower order thinking skills (LOTS) to higher order thinking skills (HOTS). 

Even before a digital learning solution is designed, the instructional designer needs to track the learning outcomes across the various Bloom levels that progress from knowledge and comprehension to synthesis and evaluation. It follows the natural flow of learning process as the learner first needs to know what a concept is, then go on to how it works and then progress to higher order skills like synthesis and evaluation.

Over the last 15 years, education scientists have further added value to this concept by modifying the levels into remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. Digital learning analysts need to painstakingly map each level to the relevant learning outcome before initiating curriculum design.

Remembering

Remembering is the very basic level that a learner can take and this includes sub-steps like recognizing, listing, describing, naming and locating. Remembering includes being able to retrieve relevant knowledge from long-term memory. For example, recognizing the dates of important events and then recalling the same. 

Action words used for creating learning outcomes: describe, identify, know, label, list, match, name, outline, recall, recognize, reproduce, select, state.

Understanding

At this level, the learner should be able to decipher meanings from oral, written or digital communication. It includes sub-processes such as comprehension of the meaning, translation, interpolation, and interpretation of instructions and problems. 

Understanding corresponds to learning outcomes such as:

Writing steps for performing a task.

Paraphrasing a document.

Categorizing a set of objects or points.

Drawing a logical conclusion. 

Constructing cause and effect models.

Action words used for creating learning outcomes: explain, classify, summarize, comprehend, convert, infer, interpret, paraphrase.

The rest is continued in the next blog titled Relevance of Bloom’s Taxonomy in digital learning (Part II)

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