3A

EDU696

Week 3 Instructor Guidance

As you were reminded in Week 2, it is a good idea to look ahead to Week 5 to prepare for the group activity – ask questions now with a quick email to your instructor if you are unclear about any of the requirements for the group activity. In Week 2, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were discussed as well as a summary of your understanding of the foundation of the CCSS in Math and English Language Arts. This week, one discussions and an assignment are required.

Week 3 Intellectual Elaboration

The intellectual elaboration for Week 3 explores 21st Century Learning Skills, the cognitive taxonomy, often referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy, or the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, and the process for creating high quality assessments.

21st Century Learning Skills

The concept of 21st Century Learning Skills recognizes the need for students to think critically, analyze information, comprehend new ideas, communicate, collaborate, solve problems, and make decisions. In 1956, a group of educational psychologists, headed by Benjamin Bloom, created a system that categorized the level of intellection in assessment questions commonly used in educational settings (Krathwohl 2002; Clark, 1999). Figure 1, below, shows the original taxonomy.

Figure 1. Cognitive Taxonomy ( Bloom, 1994)

· Evaluate is the ability to make judgments about information, provide for validity on ideas or quality of work based on a set of criteria. It is the ability to debate a subject and provide evidence for your answer

· Synthesis is the “…ability to compile information together to form new patterns or proposals to alternative solutions” (Krathwohl, 2002, p. 212).

· Analysis is process of examining and breaking down information into parts to identify motives or causes. To make inferences on and find supporting evidence to support the information.

· Application is “… using new knowledge. Solving problems in a new situation by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a different way ” (Krathwohl, 2002, p. 212).

· Comprehension is the basic demonstration of understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing and translating the information into the main ideas.

· Knowledge, the lowest on Bloom’s Taxonomy is the recalling of facts, terms, and basic concepts to answer questions.

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning

The cognitive taxonomy has been used by educators to guide curriculum assessment and development for decades. However, while the levels of thought are still recognized as valid, 21st Century Skills required a revision of Bloom's terms and considerations of how technology influences the assessment of the levels. Essentially, the revisions require technology skills to be of use in today’s classrooms (Krathwohl, 2002; Clark, 1999).

Table 1, below, lists the cognitive level and some verbs commonly associated with assessment at each level in the traditional and digital realms. For additional inspiration about designing with the revised taxonomy, see Johnson (2008) or search online where you can find multiple resources for designing and assessing learning in the digital age with the cognitive taxonomy.

Cognitive Level	Traditional Assessment Strategies	Digital Assessment Strategies
Creating	designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making	programming, filming, animating, blogging, mixing, wikiing, publishing, podcasting
Evaluating	checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing, detecting, monitoring	reviewing, posting, moderating, collaborating, and networking
Analyzing	comparing, organizing, deconstructing, attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating	mashing, linking, tagging, validating, cracking
Applying	implementing, carrying out, using, executing	running, loading, operating, uploading, sharing, editing
Understanding	interpreting, summarizing, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying	advanced searches, Boolean searches, blog journaling, twittering, commenting, annotating, subscribing
Remembering	Recognizing, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding	Bulleting, highlighting, bookmarking, searching, Googling

Table 1. Comparison of Traditional and Digital Assessment Strategies for Cognitive Taxonomy; adapted from Krathwohl (2002) and Clark (1999).

Creating High Quality Assessments

Keeping the Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy restructuring in mind, in regards to 21st Century Skills, one can debate the issue of creating high quality assessments for today’s students. Many states and school districts across the nation are discussing student assessments as they move to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The Standards focus on an increased need for deeper learning and the students’ ability to analyze, synthesize, compare, connect critique, hypothesize, prove, and explain their ideas. Therefore, the question becomes: are assessments still valid measures of student learning when the CCSS promotes a deeper learning of 21st Century skills?

Chapter 5 of Brown and Burnaford (2014) includes several articles on the topic of dynamic curriculum and instruction in the 21st Century. For example in the article by Boss and Krauss (2007) they discuss the need to include project based learning into the classroom to support 21st century learning using real world assessments. Additionally, the Noddings (2013) article discusses the need to create in classrooms the “…concept for guiding a dynamic approach in the 21st century suggests the critical role of creating and making in an environment that fosters problem solving and critical thinking” (p.19).

Week 3 Assessments Overview

Remember to review the full instructions for each assessment on the Week Three homepage in addition to the guidance provided here.

Discussion 1 - Creativity and Innovation

Discussion one ask you to think about the concept of the Flipped Classroom; an instructional approach that brings creativity and innovation to the classroom. A direct connection will be made between the flipped classroom concept, the Common Core State Standards, and teacher decision-making based on student assessments. You also attach a link to your Folio and reflect on your redesign activity from your Week 2 assignment. In this discussion reflect back on the discussion of Common Core State Standards from Week 2, Discussion 1 and how the incorporation of technology was used to enhance  instruction. Think about how the concept of the Flipped Classroom in relationship to the incorporation of technology, assessment and student learning all intertwine to create a learning experience for diverse learners.

Assignment - Learning and Innovation Skills and Student Assessment

This assignment requires you to make connections between high quality assessment with 21st Century Learning and Innovation Skills. Using the Framework for 21st Century Learning as a resource, you will redesign or modify a prior activity from one of your courses in your Master’s program. For this assignment; consider all the discussions you have had to date about differentiated instruction, diversity, assessment/report cards and technology. Consider as well the information presented this week in the instructor guidance about the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning list. You may want to include in your discussion how this revision of Bloom’s affects students’ assessments and learning in the classroom.

 

References

Bloom, B. S. (1994). Reflections on the development and use of the taxonomy. In Rehage, Kenneth J.; Anderson, Lorin W.; Sosniak, Lauren A. "Bloom's taxonomy: A forty-year retrospective". Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education, 93(2).

Boss, S. & Krauss, J. (2007). Mapping the journey: Seeing the big picture. In Reinventing project based learning: Your field guide to real-world projects in the digital age. Washington, DC: ISTE.

Brown, T. & Burnaford, G. (2014). Masters in education capstone reader. Bridgepoint Education.

Clark, D. R. (1999).  Bloom's taxonomy of learning domains (Links to an external site.) . Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html

Gerwetz, C. (June, 2013).  Experts urge states to stay course on high-quality assessments (Links to an external site.) . Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/06/experts_issue_assessment_crite.html

Johnson, L. (2008).  Bloom’s taxonomy: Designing activities tutorial (Links to an external site.)  (Flash File). Retrieved from http://media.ccconline.org/ccco/FacWiki/TeachingResources/Blooms_Taxonomy_Tutorials/BloomsTaxonomy_Activities_Tabs/BloomsTaxonomyActivitiesTabs.swf

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom's taxonomy: An overview. Routledge 41 (4). 212–218.

Noddings, N. (2013). Standardized curriculum and loss of creativity. Theory into Practice, 52(210), 215.