Does Exposure to Bloom’s Levels of Understanding Help Students
Develop Higher Order Thinking Skills?
Presenter- Lianna Etchberger
USU- Uintah Basin
1680 West Highway 40
Vernal, UT 84078
Office: (435) 722-1783
Fax: (435) 789-3188
Lianna.Etchberger@usu.edu
Lianna K. Etchberger
Utah State University, Uintah Basin Regional Campus
RESULTS
A. STUDENTS FELL INTO TWO GROUPS ACCORDING TO LEARNING GAINS
IMCB Concept Assessment Pre/Post
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
20
30
40
50
606
70
80
% Score (rounded to nearest 10%)
Pre (N=15) Ave=35±8.9, Median=38
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
-10%
-20%
Only 9 of the 11 continued second
semester Biol 1620
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Individual Students
B. CLASS DEVELOPED HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS
Congnitive Approach to Case Study
PROBLEM- High attrition rate (D or F grade, or withdrawal). Previously taught
using Traditional lecture delivery with emphasis on content.
# Students
Biol 1610: Attrition History
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
# Students
CONTEXT- Biol 1610: First semester introductory biology course for majors
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
8
8
2005
8
5
12
3
2
3
2006
2007
2008
LOCS (1)
HOCS (2)
• Scoring of qualitative results with help of Blooming Biology
Tool (Crowe, 2008): 0 = confusion; 1 = LOCS; 2 = HOCS
Pre (N=15) Ave = 1.40±0.737
9
12
• Pre-instruction question: “As a biology student, what are your
thoughts about this problem as you read the story?”
• Post-instruction question: Students received their pre
answers and were asked “As a biology student about to
complete this course, how has your thinking about this problem
changed from what you wrote at the beginning of the course?”
Confusion (0)
Post (N=15) Ave = 1.67±0.617
Passed
DF or W
D. ATTRITION REMAINED
HIGH
50% attrition
N = 24 students enrolled
8% withdrew (N=2)
46% received D or F (N=11)
46% received C or better (N=11)
Received D or F grade
Post (N=15) Ave=53±16, Median=56
INTRODUCTION
C. STUDENTS FOUND BLOOM’S MODERATELY HELPFUL
Normalized IMCBCA Learning Gains
Learning Gains
Successful biology students must develop critical thinking skills. Students taking the introductory course for
majors at our rural campus are diverse in their study competencies, contributing to a high attrition rate (up to
50%). I assessed whether teaching my students to use Bloom’s levels of understanding would help them
develop critical thinking skills and metacognition in an effort to improve learning and retention. To teach
Bloom’s levels of cognition, I gave a mini-lecture on the first day of class, lead a class discussion on reasons
for achieving higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS; applying, analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing), and
distributed the Bloom’s-based Learning Activities for Students (BLASt; Crowe et. al., 2008) as a guide for their
studying. After the first exam, students used peer instruction with clickers to label the Bloom’s level of sample
exam questions. Bloom’s skill levels for subsequent exam questions were indicated to reinforce student
awareness of Bloom’s levels throughout the semester. I assessed student learning using the introductory
molecular and cell biology concept assessment (IMCBCA; J. Knight, personal communication). Students in
my class fell into two distinct groups according to normalized learning gains (≤ 0.12 and ≥0.25, mean = 0.29,
Std Dev = 0.22; N = 15). At the end of the course, 80% of the students (N = 15) demonstrated HOCS (novel
application or analysis) without prompting when responding to an open-ended question post assessment (60%
of low learning gains group, N=5; 90% of high learning gains group, N=10) compared to just 40% in the preassessment. Anonymous student assessment of learning gains demonstrated that the Bloom’s activities
provided “much” or “great” help in their learning for 67% of respondents (N=9). These and other data support
Bloom’s education as a worthwhile intervention for improving metacognition and critical thinking skills.
Unfortunately, attrition remained high with only nine (all in the high learning gains group) of the twenty-two
students enrolled continuing in the second semester.
# Students
ABSTRACT
• Statistically significant difference between means of pre and
post test. (Paired t-Test: t = -2.26; df = 14; P level = 0.042)
DISCUSSION
Conclusions
1.Group cognitive skills were higher at the end of the semester, but I’m not sure Bloom’s exposure or some
other instructional method was responsible (alignment of activities with exams and learning objectives…).
2.Attrition (D,F or W) remained high despite emphasis of metacognition (and some active learning).
3.Learning gains correlated with grades and average test scores, but not with HOCS pre or post instruction,
(nor with deep or surface approaches, data not shown).
4.HOCS gains not correlated with deep vs. surface learning as I expected (data not shown).
5.I was struck by the personality differences between the groups.
6.Exposing students to Bloom’s is worthwhile for students AND instructor (helpful for course alignment).
Next Steps
•Continue data collection next year- ask others to score qualitative data to avoid my bias
•Improve course organization and delivery to explicitly emphasize HOCS
•Research affective cognition and attitudes toward learning- What is different about the passing vs. DWF
group. Is there a metric to identify students in the DFW group that would suggest intervention methods?
•Consider focus groups- passing vs. DWF group to discover perceptions of their biology learning experience
2009
HYPOTHESIS- Teaching students about Bloom’s levels will result in Higher Order
Cognitive Skills (HOCS) and decreased attrition.
I took responsibility for teaching this course fall ’09 previously taught using traditional lecture
delivery with emphasis on content. I used Scientific Teaching methods (Handelsman, 2006)
including lecture and clicker activities with an emphasis on concepts and HOCS. Assuming that
some of the attrition was due to poor study skills, I focused this study on increasing
metacognition and encourage study skills that foster HOCS by introducing to students the
Revised Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (Anderson, 2001).
Higher Order Cognitive Skills
Lower Order Cognitive Skills
Revised taxonomy of the cognitive domain following Anderson and Krathwohl (2001).
Pyramidal image from Atherton (2009). LOCS indicates lower-order cognitive skills; HOCS
indicates higher-order cognitive skills following Crowe et. al. (2008).
METHODS
INTERVENTIONS
Bloom’s education:
•Mini-lecture introducing Bloom’s levels with emphasis on HOCS vs. LOCS was delivered on first day of
instruction.
•Bloom’s-based Learning Activities for Students (BLASt; Crowe et. al., 2008) was provided to students and
discussed in class.
•Bloom’s level of each question on exams was identified for students using Blooming Biology Tool for instructors
(BBT; Crowe, 2008).
•Clicker activity was used to identify Bloom’s level of five exam questions after first exam.
ASSESSMENTS
Learning Gains of Course Content using the Introductory Molecular and Cell Biology Concept Assessment
(IMCBCA; Shi, submitted); 32 questions
Gains in Cognitive Approach to Open-Ended Problem using a case study I designed to assess students’
cognitive approach to a non-technical open-ended problem without being prompted for a specific type of answer
(inspired by reading Bass [1999]).
Deep vs. Surface Approaches to Learning using the Revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F; Biggs,
2001). The higher the score, the more often the statement is true for the student.
Student Attitudes using the Student Assessment of Learning Gains online tool (Seymour, 2000); a free courseevaluation for gathering learning-focused feedback from students; online at http://www.salgsite.org/
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & REFERENCES
The USU Uintah Basin campus supported this research and participation in the 2009 ASM/NSF Biology
Scholars Program in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Thanks to members of the Biology Scholars
Program for encouragement, especially Jenny Knight for sharing the ICMBCA instrument. Jenny, Mary Pat
Wenderoth, Loretta Taras and Michelle Schuster provided helpful comments on my study design. My USU
colleagues David Law, Brent Bibles, Vini Exton and Rich Etchberger provided useful comments on this poster.
REFERENCES
Anderson, L W, & Krathwohl, D R (eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision
of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman
Atherton, J S (2009). Learning and Teaching; Bloom's taxonomy [On-line] UK: Available:
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/bloomtax.htm Accessed: 14 May 2010
Bass, R (1999). The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: What’s the Problem? Inventio 1, Retrieved 14 May
2010 from http://doit.gmu.edu/inventio/
Biggs, J, Kember, D, and Leung, D Y P (2001). The Revised Two-Factor Study Process Questionnaire: R-SPQ2F. British Journal of Educational Psychology 71, 133.
Crowe, A, Dirks, C, and Wenderoth, M P (2008). Biology in Bloom: Implementing Bloom's Taxonomy to
Enhance Student Learning in Biology. CBE Life Sci Educ 7, 368-381.
Handelsman, J, Miller, S, Pfund, S (2006). Scientific Teaching. New York: W H Freeman
Seymour, E., Wiese, D., Hunter, A. & Daffinrud, S.M. (2000, March). Creating a Better Mousetrap: On-line
Student Assessment of their Learning Gains. Paper presentation at the National Meeting of the American
Chemical Society, San Francisco, CA. Online tool available at http://www.salgsite.org/
Shi, J, Wood, W B, Martin, J, Guild, N, Vicens, Q, and Knight, J. A Concept Inventory for Introductory Molecular
and Cell Biology. Submitted, CBE-Life Sciences.