Bloom's Taxonomy in Online Education

I would like to share several valuable reflections and observations from learning about Bloom’s Taxonomy this week:

1. Bloom’s Taxonomy can be used for creating assessments. Previously, I thought that it was only used when creating objectives.

2. Simply comprehending or understanding material does not count for much value from a Bloom’s standpoint. You have to take what you comprehend and apply it to something.

3. The quality of student learning is shallow at best if you don’t move into the higher-order thinking or bigger parts of the Bloom’s pyramid. In a way, students are deprived of learning.

Two insights I have about using Bloom’s Taxonomy:

1. I would like to share my question and opinion on using the very “writing” or “to write” as an action, as a Bloom’s action verb. If an assignment requires writing an analysis paper, is the writing considered the higher-level verb? To me, writing seems passive and is just an activity and not a verb that qualifies for Bloom’s structure. Yet, I have seen people claim that it does count. Passive writing can occur where no learning takes place.

2. There is a difference between relating knowledge learned when making a presentation such as PowerPoint or a Prezi, and actually learning something. Meaning, it is easy to make a visual presentation of text and slides to show a viewer, but how to we know the student has learned something beyond how to use the technology to make it? Students must make connections to materials in their presentations, visually demonstrating patterns through analysis, interpretation and classifying what they share.

One question that I still have about Bloom’s Taxonomy:

1.      When it comes to using Bloom’s Taxonomy for higher-level thinking and choosing or designing assessments, how much of an assessment should be based on the higher parts of the pyramid such as the analyzing, creating or synthesizing, and beyond just the comprehension and understanding?