What is Bloom’s taxonomy of learning?

Created by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom in 1956, Bloom’s taxonomy of learning is a multi-layered hierarchical educational framework that encourages learning by moving through six stages of objectives with increasing difficulty. 

In the framework, students move from lower-order thinking to higher-order thinking, focusing on evaluating and analyzing concepts, ideas, principles, and procedures instead of just remembering facts.

What are Bloom’s domains of learning?

Bloom proposed three domains of learning: cognitive, affective, and sensory/psychomotor. The cognitive model is the primary focus—and is what we refer to as Bloom’s taxonomy—and includes the six levels of objectives. The affective domain deals with attitudes, feelings, and emotions, and the sensory model relates to motor coordination, physical skills, and coordination.

Bloom’s taxonomy learning objectives

Bloom’s taxonomy was revised in 2001 to replace the original, static language with more modern, dynamic language and to provide clearer goals for learners. The six levels of learning objectives are:

1. Remember: recall details and general concepts
2. Understand: explain ideas or concepts
3. Apply: use information in new settings
4. Analyze: draw connections between ideas 
5. Evaluate: justify findings or conclusions 
6. Create: develop and produce new work

Why should you use Bloom’s taxonomy for learning?

The Bloom’s taxonomy framework can be used in any educational setting, whether it be higher education or for professional training purposes. Bloom’s taxonomy focuses on individualized learning, which encourages each student to focus on their strengths and develop their weaknesses. The benefit of individual learning and teaching is that feedback can be provided immediately to ensure improvement. 

Since the purpose is to create achievable goals, it also allows teachers enough time to adequately plan and build a clear lesson plan to meet these objectives –  ideal for virtual corporate learning and development. 

If the taxonomy is applied successfully, students will have mastered a new skill or acquired new knowledge, which teachers will be able to monitor and re-evaluate as they move through each stage of the framework.

Furthermore, if teachers involve students in the assessment process through self reflection, it will contribute to the progression of learning motivation. Self assessment is a powerful tool in developing students’ responsibility for their own progress and achievements in learning.

Examples of Bloom’s taxonomy

So, what does Bloom’s taxonomy look like in action? Because it is focused on providing an order for certain behaviors, it can be used in countless settings. In an educational setting, it could be used for a number of purposes, including to: 

• Create assessments
• Plan lessons
• Evaluate the difficulty of assignments
• Design online curriculum charts
• Build video courses

How to use Bloom’s taxonomy for video training

By focusing on the development of cognitive skills, Bloom’s taxonomy can help instructors create more effective video training programs, while making it easier to plan courses. Here are some of the ways you can use Bloom’s taxonomy for video training.

1. Remember: compose a training video outlining the general concepts that you want your students to remember. 
2. Understand: test the knowledge and how well the information has been comprehended by implementing an in-video interactive quiz.
3. Apply: put the steps of the training into action through virtual classrooms or online video simulations. For example, if you are training on customer service you may embed a short quiz into your training video to determine how the learner would react in certain situations. You could also have learners return-demonstrate their knowledge through asynchronous video simulations using tools such as Panopto. 
4. Analyze: encourage students and teachers to interact with each other and exchange ideas in an online forum. With Panopto, students and trainers can start discussions and comment on training videos to analyze specific concepts explored in the video at certain points in time.
5. Evaluate: based on the previous analysis, students can suggest changes to the training by responding with their own microlearning videos, or they could act as mentors for future learners by flipping the classroom and developing new, updated course material.
6. Create: put together entirely new work based on the concepts learned. Synchronously, employees could create tailored virtual trust-building sessions. Asynchronously, groups could work together to put together a video presentation of a working plan for the business on how to improve or change up a process based on the information gathered in the evaluation. 

Want to see what Panopto can do for your business?

Our team will contact you promptly to answer questions and schedule you for a demonstration and a free trial of our video platform.

Get started now!