Today we have Dr. McGuire with us to talk about Bloom's Taxonomy. Once again Dr. McGuire
Is the assistant vice chancellor for learning, teaching, and retention here at LSU. Thanks for coming in again.
Great! It's good to be here.
So what is Bloom's Taxonomy?
That's a great question. Bloom's Taxonomy is actually a classification system that really looks at different levels of learning, and it starts with the very lowest level which
is just memorizing information. Then after that is understanding, then applying, then analyzing, then evaluating, then creating is at the top.
Okay. And that's increasing in terms of difficulty, I guess?
Absolutely. In terms of the mental processes you need in order to be able to affect each of these levels.
Okay, and I want to talk about each level specifically, so let's start with level one: Remembering.
Yes. That's just memorizing information verbatim. If you were told to study something,
you memorize all the definitions, you memorize all the formulas, and you kinda stop there.
Okay. And the second level is understanding.
Absolutely. It's one level up. Not only at this point do you remember those things, but you can actually restate them, put them in your own words, and do what I like to
describe as: you could take the information, explain it to your eighty-year-old grandmother or
your eight-year-old nephew in words they understand, if you're at the understanding level.
And so really, ideally you would want to study with someone, to get to this understanding.
That would be great, because if you're explaining it to someone, they you're certainly implementing that understanding level.
Okay. And what's the third?
The third level is applying, and that's where you not only have to remember the information you can put in your own words, but you can use it to solve problems you've
never seen before, answer questions you've never seen before. You can apply that information to another task.
Okay is this about where colleges is coming now?
I'd say the very beginning of college, absolutely. But it really requires even those higher levels.
Okay. Which is-the next one is analyzing.
Absolutely, and analyzing means that you could take any concept and really break it down into the components that went into that concept, do an analysis of it to see
what the overall concept is and so that involves, if, uh, someone asked you to explain, let's say, what a buffer solution is you could talk about all of the
different concepts: strong acids, anything that goes into that discussion if you're at analyzing.
Okay. And level five is evaluating.
Yes, and actually there was an older version of Bloom's which some of our listeners and viewers might be familiar with where the next level was not at the
creating level. I'm sorry, not at the evaluating level. It was at the creating level. But now that the evaluating level says that you know all this information you can put
in your own words, you can analyze information. So now you can look at two ideas, two theories, two ways of
solving the problem and determine whether one of them is more likely to be effective than another.
Okay. And the last level is creating.
Absolutely, and so now that means that you could actually come up with your own theories, your own ideas,
your own processes about how something should be done.
Can you change once you start your collegiate career? Can you change levels?
Oh absolutely! We see that all the time, because typically in high school students have been operating just at the memorization and understanding levels. But we can
teach them how to move themselves higher. They really are analyzing concepts and are now able to come up with their own theories and own processes.
Okay. Well, thanks for coming in. Uh, for more information, please visit our website.