Levels of learning for which questions can be written

Match questions to expected level of learning

Consider how the course objectives that you state match the learning experiences that you provide for students. Also consider whether the questions that you use in your course, in fact, match (are congruent with) objectives and learning activities designed to meet those objectives.

For example, do you have lofty learning goals (e.g, evaluate a proposal for local environmental improvement), provide excellent class activities (team experiment on stream conditions) but then give a 50-question from the textbook multiple-choice final exam that counts toward 50 percent of the grade?

Levels of learning

You probably are familiar with Bloom's "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" which, since 1956, has provided guidelines for stating expected levels of learning. Levels in the cognitive domain include:

• Knowledge of facts, terminology, etc.
• Comprehension of meaning
• Application of previously learned information
• Analysis that includes the skill to make inferences, etc.
• Synthesis that includes creative skills
• Evaluation which includes the ability to critique, defend, and reframe

Ask yourself, "do course goals, teaching and learning activities, and student assessment methods align in the same domain?"

Other learning domains are "affective" and "psychomotor."

You may be interested in the updated "Bloom's Taxomony" described in the book “A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment” by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl, 2001, Longman, available from Amazon.com.

See a brief explanation of the new taxonomy at http://education.atu.edu/people/sadams/lessons/bloom1.htm. The newer taxonomy includes:

• Factual – terms, elements, details
• Conceptual – classifications, categories, principles, theories, models
• Procedural – skills, algorithms, techniques, criteria for procedures
• Metacognition – strategic knowledge, contextual and conditional knowledge, self-knowledge