HOW TO WRITE LEARNING OBJECTIVES BY USING BLOOM'S TAXONOMY?

   Hello everyone! Today, I would like to focus on the topic which is Bloom's taxonomy and while talking about his taxonomy, I am going to mention about the use and importance of it on our learning objectives. In this case, a question comes to my mind. How can we create or write our learning objectives by using this famous taxonomy? I will try to answer this question in this post.

   Firstly, let me briefly talk about the taxonomy itself! Bloom's taxonomy was created in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom. He was a successful educationist by the way. Benjamin Bloom decided to create such a taxonomy so as to promote " higher forms of thinking " in education such as " analyzing and evaluating " rather than just " remembering facts ".

   The taxonomy is divided into 6 levels of learning as you see below.

1-) Remembering =) It involves " retrieving, recognizing and recalling relevant knowledge from long term memory ".

• Retrieve (v) = To get or bring something back.
• Recall (v) = To remember.

2-) Understanding =) It means " to build information from oral, written and graphic messages ". 

        It involves " summarizing, comparing, explaining, discussing etc. ".

3-) Applying =) It involves " carrying out or using a procedure through using or implementing ".

        It involves " calculating, solving, manipulating etc. ".

4-) Analyzing =) It deals with " breaking material into constituent parts or determining how those parts relate to one another into an overall structure ".

        It involves " distinguishing, analyzing, investigating, organizing etc. ".

5-) Evaluating =) It has the learner making judgments based on criteria and standards.

       It involves " concluding, testing, checking etc ".

6-) Creating =) It means " putting elements together so as to form a coherent or functional whole ". 

       In this step, we reorganize elements into a new pattern or structure.

       Creating involves " designing, constructing, inventing, producing etc. ". 

Note : I suggest you not to forget that Bloom's taxonomy begins with lower - order thinking skills to higher - order thinking skills. In this case, we face a situation like this ;

• Before you can understand a concept, you must remember it.
• So as to apply a concept, you must understand it.
• In order to evaluate a concept, you must have analyzed it.
• To create a correct conclusion, you must evaluate it.

WHAT LEVEL OF LEARNING APPLIES?

• Introductory courses introduce a variety of skills and new concepts. 

• Advanced courses often assume that the student comes prepared with the foundational knowledge and they're now ready to use this knowledge to move on to higher order thinking and learning and therefore should contain learning objectives which focus on higher order skills.

• Every course should have a variety of objectives from each domain. This shouldn't be forgotten. 

HOW TO WRITE A LEARNING OBJECTIVE?

1-) I suggest you to start with the stem sentence. For example ;

      After completing this module, you will be able to :

      By the end of the lesson, the students will be able to :

2-) You need to determine the learning outcome. In this case, you must think about what it is that you want your students to be able to do and then think about how you will know that they understand what you have taught them. ( OBJECTIVES )

3-) You can consult the Bloom's wheel to help you select verbs, activities and assessments for your course. I am giving an example below. 

Note : You can use the wheel above in order to choose suitable verbs while writing your objectives. 

4-) Finally, you need to write the verb (s) and learning outcome into a statement that forms a complete sentence. 
E.g. By the end of the lesson, the students will be able to interpret and analyze relevant charts.
E.g. By the end of the lesson, the students will be able to create aesthetic structures for the genre in which they're writing.

Note : As much as possible, try to write strong learning objectives!

Note 2 : Your learning objectives need to be measurable and observable statements of what students will be able to do at the end of a unit of learning.

Note 3 : Strong learning objectives DO NOT include " unclear " or " immeasurable " terms. Please, don't try to use such verbs " learn, be aware of, understand, know etc. " !