Climbing Bloom's Taxonomy in a 15 minute lesson

Bloom's Taxonomy is a framework that is used to guide instructors to design lessons and training that moves the learners from lower level to higher level thinking. The use of higher level thinking improves learning and better prepares learners to be able to transfer the information for use in real life situations.  3 domains of learning are covered: 

1) Cognitive Domain refers to the development of intellectual knowledge
2) Affective Domain refers to handling emotions such as values, motivation and attitude
3) Psychomotor Domain refers to physical movement and behaviours

Each of these 3 domains also has subcategories ranging from simple to more complex. The Cognitive domain has 6 subcategories: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create. This is the most widely known and widely used component of Bloom's Taxonomy. Each subcategory is associated with processes that are described as verbs. An instructor can use the subcategories and verbs to write clear and effective learning objectives for planning lessons, units and curriculum which ensure learners are engaged in ways that move them upwards to higher order thinking. 


See list of verbs related to each level of the Taxonomy, sample questions and brief examples. 

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I applied Bloom's taxonomy on my 15 minute Voicethread slideshow (shown below) about the difference between palliative care and end of life care to take it from merely presenting the information to engaging learners at several levels of thinking. 


The presentation begins with a questions staff put forward: "Is the term palliative care just another way of saying end of life care?" By posing this question at the beginning and asking the learner to jote down their thoughts I engage students in the third of Gagne's Events of Instruction: Recall. This double as a learning activity when I loop the learner back to this same question after presenting the information. To answer this question, the learner must interpret and summarize the content presented which is the Understand level of the taxonomy. A series of "Apply Your Knowledge" learning activities picks it up to higher levels of thinking. In the first activity, learners complete 3 short case studies where they determine if the case describes someone who would benefit from palliative care vs end of life care. This requires executing and implementing the information in a different context at the Apply level. The second activity has the learner identify the similarities and differences between descriptions of palliative vs end of life care for someone with dementia presented in short video interviews. This requires comparison from the Understand level. The third and final activity also prompted comparison at the Understand level by having learners compare their own understanding of the different between palliative and end of life care with that of a colleague's. 

A learning activity that would fall under higher levels of thinking would be to present learners with the new model of palliative care diagram and the 8 domains diagram and have them create a mash up with the two. This would incorporate mental processes from the levels of Analyze, Evaluate and Create.


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