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How to Design Assessments Using Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's taxonomy is one of the most influential theories in modern education theory. Bloom divides learning into three domains: the cognitive (reading, writing, math and book subjects); the affective (feelings, motivation and values); and the psychomotor (physical education). Bloom's taxonomy can be a useful tool for designing assessments, since two or more of the domains it covers often come into play simultaneously in one subject.

Instructions

    • 1

      Read over Bloom's taxonomy circle of cognition. If you do not have access to a taxonomy circle, refer to the one at www.lincoln.edu. Look over the circle for the learning tasks that can be applied to your discipline. For example, if you're teaching psychology, use memory, application, evaluation and analysis. Write down the types of tasks that you can use on a list.

    • 2

      List ways in which the non-cognitive aspects of Bloom's taxonomy can be applied to your assessment. For example, if you are teaching English, you can apply skills from the affective domain (e.g. feeling, relating), as English literature has emotional aspects to it. To make a connection, simply think of skills used in Bloom's three domains, and apply them to your subject. Feeling, for example, can be applied to English through journals where students confess their feeling.

    • 3

      Organize your assessment into three to five sections, each one corresponding to one of the key skills in one of the three domais in Bloom's taxonomy. Cognitive skills include understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating. Affective skills include describing feelings and empathizing with others. Psychomotor skills include sensing, moving and building; these are rarely used in conventional evaluations.

    • 4

      Write questions that assess the key skills in the domains you are testing. Do not use multiple choice or true/false questions for the affective domain because to test a student's affective development, you need to actually see a display of his feelings on a subject (e.g. an essay). Use written evaluation (short and long answer questions) for the affective domain. Use written and objective (multiple choice and true/false) for the cognitive domain.

    • 5

      Assign a number of points to each section so that the total number of points for each domain reflects how much you want each domain to be assessed. For example, if you want the test to be weighted 60% cognitive and 40% affective, and you have two cognitive sections and three affective sections, weight each of the cognitive sections at 30% and each of the affective sections at 13.3%.

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