Syllabus with Bloom Taxonomy

A syllabus is a planning tool for course purposes. It helps the instructor to organize the course, define goals and student learning outcomes, and plan the course assessment and the calendar. The syllabus is also a guide for the students who take the respective course. It should communicate in a clear and detailed manner the course content, teaching approaches, requirements, and expectations in the course. Since the syllabus is a document that communicates with a larger audience (colleagues, administrators, accreditation agencies) it is also a reference guide.

In the process of planning the course and building the syllabus the instructor must decide which topics will be covered in the course, and for each what is the expected learning level that will be demonstrated by the students. Based on that decision the instructor will plan appropriate assessment measures. The purpose is to have a good balance of learning outcomes adequate to the importance of the different topics taught by the instructor. The instructor is the one who decides on which topic students should demonstrate a higher levels of thinking and the instructor would plan accordingly the appropriate assessment measure for the respective levels.

A very useful tool in planning for expected levels of teaching, learning, and assessment is the table of Bloom’s taxonomy. Bloom’s taxonomy gives a useful guide to map out the instructor’s plans for the course and provides an easy way to think about appropriate assessment tools. Bloom’s revised taxonomy defines learning as a two dimensional process: cognitive and knowledge based. This takes into account the learners’ thinking and knowledge based abilities.

Bloom classified the cognitive skills in six levels from lower (remembering, understanding, and lower level of applying) to higher levels of thinking (applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating). Below in this document you will find detailed descriptions for each level.

When planning activities and assessment for course purposes the first step the instructor would take is to map out each topic studied in the course at the desired level of thinking and knowledge. Then the next step the instructor would derive the learning outcomes and matching assessment type for each topic.

Learning outcomes objectives (what the instructor plans that students will know or demonstrate by the end of the course) can be classified under one of the six levels of the cognitive process dimension, and under one of the four categories under the knowledge dimension of the table.

For example the instructor thinking of a specific theory that will be taught in the course has as goal that students are able to use the theory and analyze the provided information. In the same time the instructor would like to have students be able to show this ability in writing. This goal would map in Bloom’s taxonomy in the cognitive dimension under “Analyzing” and the ability to demonstrate in practice would fall under “Procedural” knowledge dimension.

Then in order to satisfy the two choices the instructor would design an assignment where students would be required to do a data analysis and write a report of findings.

In the syllabus under the Learning Outcomes section this goal would be:

“Students will be able to analyze given data sets and write a report on the findings.”


In order to plan learning outcomes and measure student learning based on learning outcomes we need to plan for the appropriate assessment.

Below are descriptors for each of the cognitive levels and a list of questions to think about in designing the appropriate assessment for each level.

CATEGORIES of COGNITIVE PROCESS


Remembering
Retrieve relevant knowledge from long-term memory

RECOGNIZING (identifying)

RECALLING (retrieving)

Understanding
Construct meaning from instructional messages, including oral, written,

and graphic communication

INTERPRETING (clarifying, paraphrasing, representing, translating)

EXEMPLIFYING (illustrating, instantiating)

CLASSIFYING (categorizing, subsuming)

SUMMARIZING (abstracting, generalizing)

INFERRING (concluding, extrapolating, interpolating, predicting)

COMPARING (contrasting, mapping, matching)

EXPLAINING (constructing models)


Applying
Carry out or use a procedure in a given situation

EXECUTING (carrying out)

IMPLEMENTING (using)


Analyzing
Break material into its constituent parts and determine how the parts

relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose

DIFFERENTIATING (discriminating, distinguishing, focusing, selecting)

ORGANIZING (finding coherence, intergrating, outlining, parsing, structuring)

ATTRIBUTING (deconstructing)


Evaluating
Make judgments based on criteria and standards

CHECKING (coordinating, detecting, monitoring, testing

CRITIQUING (judging)


Creating
Put elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganize

elements into a new pattern or structure

GENERATING (hypothesizing)

PLANNING (designing)

PRODUCING (constructing)



KNOWLEDGE DIMENSIONS:

Factual Knowledge is knowledge that is basic to specific disciplines. This dimension refers to essential facts, terminology, details or elements students must know or be familiar with in order to understand a discipline or solve a problem in it.

Conceptual Knowledge is knowledge of classifications, principles, generalizations, theories, models, or structures pertinent to a particular disciplinary area.

Procedural Knowledge refers to information or knowledge that helps students to do something specific to a discipline, subject, or area of study. It also refers to methods of inquiry, very specific or finite skills, algorithms, techniques, and particular methodologies.

Metacognitive Knowledge is the awareness of one’s own cognition and particular cognitive processes. It is strategic or reflective knowledge about how to go about solving problems, perform cognitive tasks, to include contextual and conditional knowledge and knowledge of self.




References

Anderson, L.W. & Krathwohl, D.R. (Eds.) (2001). A taxonomy for Learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.


Bloom, B.S. (Ed.), Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., & Krathwohl, D.R. (1956).

Taxonomy of educational objectives: Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay.