Bloom’s Taxonomy

An effective rubric for student understanding is attributed to Bloom (1956). Referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy, this proposes that there is a hierarchy of student understanding; that a student may have one level of reasoning skill with a concept, but not another. The taxonomy proposes to be ordered: some levels of reasoning build upon other levels of reasoning.

In the learning objective that we present in for each live session, we will also identify the level of reasoning that we hope students will achieve at the conclusion of the live session.

1. Remember A student can remember that the concept exists. This might require the student to define, duplicate, or memorize a set of concepts or facts.
2. Understand A student can understand the concept, and can produce a working technical and non-technical statement of the concept. The student can explain why the concept is, or why the concept works in the way that it does.
3. Apply A student can use the concept as it is intended to be used against a novel problem.
4. Analyze A student can assess whether the concept has worked as it should have. This requires both an understanding of the intended goal, an application against a novel problem, and then the ability to introspect or reflect on whether the result is as it should be.
5. Evaluate A student can analyze multiple approaches, and from this analysis evaluate whether one or another approach has better succeeded at achieving its goals.
6. Create A student can create a new or novel method from axioms or experience, and can evaluate the performance of this new method against existing approaches or methods.