Bloom’s TaxonomyIt’s Not About

Stuffing Armadillos!

The Levels of Learning

Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy in the

Chemical Engineering Curriculum

Presented to CHEN FacultySeptember 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 constraints…

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 questions will be posed

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 help identify “retention issues”

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 wet-bulb 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).