Mastering Learning Objectives: A Guide to Action Verbs and Bloom's Taxonomy
Crafting effective learning objectives is crucial for educators aiming to guide their students toward specific skills and knowledge. Bloom's Taxonomy, a classification system of learning objectives, provides a valuable framework for this process. This article explores how to leverage Bloom's Taxonomy and action verbs to create measurable and impactful learning objectives at both the course and lesson levels.
Understanding Bloom's Taxonomy
Bloom's Taxonomy, initially proposed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, categorizes different objectives and skills that educators set for their students. The taxonomy has evolved to include six levels of learning, which can be used to structure the learning objectives, lessons, and assessments of a course. Bloom’s Taxonomy is hierarchical, meaning that learning at the higher levels is dependent on having attained prerequisite knowledge and skills at lower levels. The six levels are:
- Remembering: Recalling basic facts and concepts.
- Understanding: Explaining ideas or concepts.
- Applying: Using information in new situations.
- Analyzing: Drawing connections among ideas.
- Evaluating: Justifying a decision or course of action.
- Creating: Producing new or original work.
It's often visually represented as a pyramid, illustrating this hierarchy.
Tailoring Objectives to Student Level and Course Type
The appropriate level of learning objectives should align with the students' existing knowledge and the course's purpose. For instance, introductory courses or those with many freshmen may focus on lower-order skills like remembering and understanding, building a foundational knowledge base. Conversely, advanced courses with juniors, seniors, or graduate students can target higher-order skills such as analyzing, evaluating, and creating, assuming a solid understanding of fundamental concepts. You may need a few, for any radically new concepts specific to your course. However, these advanced students should be able to master higher-order learning objectives.
Action Verbs: The Key to Measurable Objectives
To ensure that learning objectives are measurable, it's essential to use action verbs that clearly define the expected student behavior. Avoid verbs that are difficult to quantify, such as "understand," "learn," "appreciate," or "enjoy." Instead, opt for verbs that describe specific, observable actions.
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Several verbs may be associated with multiple Bloom’s Taxonomy levels. These “multilevel verbs” are actions that could apply to different activities. For example, you could have an objective stating “At the end of this lesson, students will be able to explain the difference between H2O and OH-.” This would be an understanding-level objective. Adding to this confusion, you can locate Bloom’s verb charts that list verbs at levels different from what we list below.
Course-Level vs. Lesson-Level Objectives
It's important to distinguish between course-level and lesson-level objectives. Course-level objectives are broad, overarching goals for the entire course, while lesson-level objectives are specific, measurable outcomes for individual lessons that contribute to achieving the course-level objectives. The biggest difference between course and lesson-level objectives is that we don’t directly assess course-level objectives. Course-level objectives are just too broad. Instead, we use several lesson-level outcomes to demonstrate mastery of one course-level outcome. You may only have 3-5 course-level objectives.
Lesson-level objectives are what we use to demonstrate that a student has mastery of the course-level objectives. We do this by building lesson-level objectives that build toward the course-level objective. Because the lesson-level objectives directly support the course-level objectives, they need to build up the Bloom’s Taxonomy to help your students reach mastery of the course-level objectives.
Aligning Objectives and Assessments
Quality Matters standards emphasize the alignment of course assessments (activities, projects, and exams) with learning objectives. Assessments should directly measure the skills and knowledge defined in the objectives. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to make sure that the verbs you choose for your lesson-level objectives build up to the level of the verb that is in the course-level objective. The lesson level verbs can be below or equal to the course level verb, but they CANNOT be higher in level. Each objective needs one verb. Either a student can master the objective, or they fail to master it. If an objective has two verbs (say, define and apply), what happens if a student can define, but not apply?
Practical Tips for Writing Effective Objectives
Use one verb per objective: This ensures clarity and measurability. If an objective has two verbs (say, define and apply), what happens if a student can define, but not apply?
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Ensure verbs align with Bloom's Taxonomy: Choose verbs that reflect the desired level of cognitive skill.
Link lesson-level objectives to course-level objectives: Ensure that lesson-level objectives contribute to the achievement of course-level goals. Ensure that the verbs in the course level objective are at least at the highest Bloom’s Taxonomy as the highest lesson level objectives that support it.
Consider Bloom's Taxonomy when selecting verbs: When you are ready to write, it can be helpful to list the level of Bloom’s next to the verb you choose in parentheses. Course level objective 1. This trick will help you quickly see what level verbs you have.
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