Bloom’s Taxonomy
It’s Not About
Stuffing Armadillos!
The Levels of Learning
Applying Bloom’s
Taxonomy in the Chemical
Engineering Curriculum
Presented to CHEN Faculty
September 12, 2008
T. Placek
Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Bloom’s Taxonomy is a method to
classify the various levels of thinking
and learning
• The method is widely accepted and
has been applied to many learning
situations.
• The method allows one to “position” a
particular learning skill or learning
issue as belonging to a “category”
rather than along a “continuum.”
Developing Sophistication
• As a learner, students move from
simple skills (such as the recall of
information) toward more advanced
skills (such as being able to see how
major problems can be solved by
assembling various problem elements
to meet the needs and constraints of
the problem statement.
Bloom’s Taxonomy and
ABET
• In a sense, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a
very important tool to help achieve
our program outcomes as they
naturally contain several levels of
sophistication and learning.
– Low Level: Ability to apply knowledge of
math, science and engineering
– High Level: Ability to design a system to
meet desired needs within realistic
The Original Taxonomy
• The “Levels” as proposed by Bloom in
1956 are:
– Knowledge
– Comprehension
– Application
– Analysis
– Synthesis
– Evaluation
– Valuation
Bloom’s Rose
“Remembering” *
Low Level Skill
 Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling
relevant knowledge from long-term
memory.
• Freshman courses
• CHEN 2100 (typical)
* = Nomenclature based on Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
“Understanding”
Low Level Skill
 Constructing meaning from oral,
written, and graphic messages
through interpreting, exemplifying,
classifying, summarizing, inferring,
comparing, and explaining.
“Applying”
Intermediate Level Skill
 Carrying out or using a procedure
through executing, or implementing.
• CHEN 3820 (typical), etc.
• “Problem Solving” procedures
“Analyzing”
Higher Level Skill
 Breaking material into constituent
parts, determining how the parts
relate to one another and to an
overall structure or purpose through
differentiating, organizing, and
attributing.
• CHEN 3650 (typical)
“Evaluating”
Higher Level Skill
 Making judgments based on criteria
and standards through checking and
critiquing.
“Creating”
Highest Level Skill
 Putting elements together to form a
coherent or functional whole;
reorganizing elements into a new
pattern or structure through
generating, planning, or producing.
• CHEN 4470 (typical)
Pausing for a moment to
reflect…
• Why are we discussing Bloom’s
Taxonomy?
– “Proactive for Student Learning”
– Somewhat interesting… (considering
learning in a systematic fashion)
– Relationship to ABET (reflected in
program outcome)
– Something else perhaps???
A Single Data Point…
• We have this week (Monday)
administered the CHEN3AA0 exam
(concept inventory)
• “Raw results” are available and are
being interpreted by CAPAC and
faculty
• Single data point: One student
answered NO problems correctly out
of 20 asked.
A Question Arises
• How is it possible that we have a
student in our program who is a
senior and yet does not demonstrate
having the ability to recall and apply
ANY of the chemical engineering
concepts covered on the exam
correctly?
Just an Isolated Case?
• Four students (approximately 10% of
the senior class) failed to get more
than 25% of the problems correct (not
accounting for guessing)
• Five students got grades of less than
0% when a correction for guessing
was applied.
What is the Real Issue?
• Rather than consider the exam
scores or the actual problems, we
should ask a very fundamental
question?
– How is it that we have students who
have “passed” all our courses with the
grade of C or better and yet “appear” to
be unable to recall or apply the concepts
covered in our courses?
Possible Answers
1. Students are being graded “too
easily” and our grades are “inflated”.
2. Students are being graded
“properly” but are forgetting what
they exhibited at the time of testing
(i.e., forgetting is occurring).
Other Answers
• We have not properly detected the true
knowledge of our students on our exams
(students who have not actual learned the
concept “seem” to be able to apply in on
our current exams.)
• Students perform poorly on a test of
“concepts” because they have not
encountered this type of exam question
before.
Didn’t We Solve This Problem
Once Before?
• Many years ago, we were seeing
students in our program we believed
“should not be” in our program and
instituted a C or better requirement to
reduce this.
• To an extent, this helped but didn’t
necessary solve the “root problem.”
What is the Root Problem?
• One explanation we can offer is
“students (some, many, a few, most)
are actually not learning (mastering)
the concepts taught at any but
(possibly) the lowest level.”
– How many students can draw a sketch
of the proper temperature profiles on
each side of an interface where two
heated fluids are separated by a solid
surface?
Root Problem (cont)
– How many students can explain why a
drawing of the concentration gradients
in an absorber make “no sense”?
– How many students stand in front of our
multiple effect evaporator experiment
and cannot deduce basic energy and
material balances?
C or Better Revisited
• What does a C represent?
– Scores on exams and HW are sufficient
to warrant the grade “passing.”
– Eventually “weak students” are able to
“work the system” and get the grade of
C (potentially after multiple attempts).
– We cannot “cap” the number of attempts
to take a course to control this.
Making The Grade of C
Represent True Learning
• Our goal should be that students
– Understand the concepts being taught
– Can retain this understanding
– Can apply this understanding
– Can use this knowledge in more
sophisticated ways in our advanced
courses (as per Bloom’s Taxonomy)
Role of Exams
• Our primary assessment of
“knowledge” and “learning” is the
student’s performance on exams.
Many of our courses predominantly
use exams that are patterned after
the following model:
– Homework is assigned to “clue the
student in” on the material that will be on
exams and the fashion in which the
Role of Exams (cont)
– Exam problems which are NOT like HW are
seen as unfair by our students
– Exam problems often employ a particular
“format”:
• The exam covers specific material (targeted).
• The problem will provide all the data required
• If one puts the data into the right equation(s) (as
per HW) and if one doesn’t make math errors, the
student will get the correct answer (and be
assumed to “understand the concepts involved.”
How Students Study for This
Type of Exam
• Do homework to “learn” rather than
learning from lecture
• Cram before exam (review homework
and old exams) because they do not
actually already “know or understand
the concepts”
• Almost immediately forget (from
short-term memory) what was
“crammed in”
• Repeat for each exam and final
Has Learning Occurred?
• Probably not…
• Some of our students are actually
learning to learn and successfully
retaining knowledge and growing in
problem solving skills.
• Many are merely “cruising” (having
seen how to “play the game”).
Bloom’s Taxonomy Applied to
Outcome CHEN(A)
• “Our students have acquired and can
apply knowledge in the areas of
mathematics, basic sciences, and
engineering to solve problems
encountered in the practice of
chemical engineering.”
Bloom’s “Remembering”
• arrange, define, describe, duplicate,
identify, label, list, match, memorize,
name, order, outline, recognize,
relate, recall, repeat, reproduce,
select, state.
CHEN(A) “Remembering”
• Graduates can recognizes functional
relationships among independent and
dependent variables.
• Describes physical significance of
functions, derivatives of functions, and
integrals of functions
• Describes fundamental scientific and
engineering principles in chemical,
physical, and/ or biological processes and
systems as relevant to area of
concentration.
Bloom’s “Understanding”
• Classify, convert, defend, describe,
discuss, distinguish, estimate,
explain, express, extend, generalized,
give example(s), identify, indicate,
infer, locate, paraphrase, predict,
recognize, rewrite, report, restate,
review, select, summarize, translate.
CHEN(A) “Understanding”
• Explains the role of mathematics as a
tool for modeling systems and
processes.
• Identifies which fundamental scientific
and engineering principles govern the
performance of a given process or
system.
Bloom’s “Applying”
• Apply, change, choose, compute,
demonstrate, discover, dramatize,
employ, illustrate, interpret,
manipulate, modify, operate, practice,
predict, prepare, produce, relate
schedule, show, sketch, solve, use,
write
CHEN(A) “Applying”
• Applies mathematical principles to obtain
analytical or numerical solution to model
equations.
• Chooses a mathematical model of a system or
process appropriate for the required accuracy.
• Applies engineering science principles as
relevant to area of concentration,
e.g.:"Conservation" principles of total mass,
species mass, linear momentum, angular
momentum, energy, or charge to model
chemical, physical, and/or biological processes
or systems.
CHEN(A) “Applying” (cont)
• Rate and constitutive equations to model
relevant chemical, physical, and/or
biological processes or systems.
• Thermodynamic principles to predict
bounds on the performance of processes
or systems.
• Materials principles to characterize
behavior of physical, chemical, and/or
biological processes or systems.
Implication for Exams
• Exams can be modified to “test at a
more advanced” and “ABET
appropriate level” to establish
whether “learning and understanding”
is actually occurring.
• Students without “true learning” will
perform poorly on problems of this
type unless we address “learning
disabilities”.
• Course embedded assessment can
Example Exam Problem
• (open book) Air at 311K is flowing
through a packed bed of spheres
having a diameter of 12.7 mm. Void
fraction is 0.38 and bed diameter is
0.61 m and height is 2.44 m. Air
enters at a rate of 0.358 kg/s at 1.10
atm abs. What is the pressure drop
in the bed? (SOLUTION: plug
numbers into Ergun Equation)
Alternate Exam Problem
• (closed book) The Ergun Equation is
shown below:
• Discuss the significance of each term
on the right hand side ( form drag,
skin friction, etc).
Test Yourself Questions
• What is Kay’s Rule? For what types of
gases would you have the greatest
confidence in the answer?
• You are estimating the vapor pressure of
ammonia. The Riedel correlation was
assigned to be used. You searched the
web and found that the Riedel correlation
was developed by Riedel to provide high
accuracy for use in the petrochemical
industry. Are the values obtained by the
more complicated model which accounts
for many physical characteristics more
accurate?
More Exam Examples
• When are trial and error solutions
required? (How can you anticipate
needing to use this technique?)
• (closed book) What are the English (SI)
units employed on the x- and y-axis on a
humidity chart? What is the theoretical
basis of the line associated with the wetbulb and dry-bulb temperatures being
equal?
What’s Next ?
• We can become conscious of the problem
of students being “conditioned” to expect a
standard exam format and provide more
“insightful problems” which more
accurately gauge a student’s
understanding
• We can expect some students to do more
poorly on such problems and have more
difficulty passing our courses
• Our challenge is to be able to help these
students with learning issues (different
teaching techniques and expectations).