Jeopardy Game

Prior Learning Assessment

A Review of Bloom's Taxonomy and Kolb's Theory of Experiential Learning: Practical Uses for Prior Learning Assessment Elena J. Murphy

I have been teaching prior leaming assessment for 12years in an aduh degree completion program. In theprogram's first course, students leam the fundamentals of Kolb's theory of experiential leaming as a tool to help them ascertain what their experience has taught them. Col- leagues have used Bloom's Taxonomy in conjunction with Kolb's theory as a useful tool for helping students move beyond superficial writing and add a depth of understanding and critical analysis to their essays.

Demonstrating depth of knowledge is a key component to writing leaming experience essays, Aduh students are asked to think about areas in their hves in which they have gained knowledge that relates to college-level leaming, Refiection on the knowledge obtained includes evaluating the actions that occurred in a leaming situation. Students are asked to consider what did or did not work, what they leamed, and how they would approach the same situation differently to have a more successful outcome.

However, reflecting on and writing about experiential leaming are not enough to receive credits based on the leaming. Students must go beyond the refiection and exam- ine how they appUed the knowledge. From the practical ap- plication comes more refiection on the actions performed that lead to the results, or lack thereof. Students must integrate concepts from theoretical knowledge to balance the refiection and the practical application. Bloom's Tax- onomy and Kolb's theory of experiential leaming together provide useful information for helping students organize

what they have leamed and write the experiential leaming essay.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krath- wohl, 1956) presents classifications of cognitive operations individuals use for leaming to fully occur, Leaming is classi- fied within the cognitive domain into six hierarchical levels ordered from the least to the most complex: knowledge, comprehension, apphcation, analysis, synthesis, and evalu- ation. The levels are assumed to be cumulative, with each one in the system building on the successful completion of previous levels.

Each of the six levels in the hierarchy represents an essential skill for students to become critical thinkers. At the knowledge level, the lowest in the hierarchy, the student recalls or recognizes information, ideas, and principles in the approximate form in which she or he leamed them. The material can vary from specific facts to complete theories, but all that is required is remembering the information, Leaming objectives at this level include knowing terms, facts, methods, procedures, basic concepts, and principles. In prior leaming assessment, students are asked to identify how they leamed a task or skill from their hfe experience. For example, a student who is writing an essay on super- vising employees can review the methods and procedures they use in their daily supervision routine.

Elena J, Murphy is director of iearning assessment at Nyack Coilege, The Journal of Continuing Higher Education, Voi, 55, No, 3, Fail 2007. Copyright © 2007, Association for Continuing Higher Education,

The Journal of Continuing Higher Education • 65

The comprehension level is defined as the abihty to grasp the meaning of material. Students may demonstrate comprehension by translating material from one form to another or by interpreting material. Ultimately, students using comprehension demonstrate a basic understanding of the material. Whereas a student at the knowledge level can recall information in a rote fashion, those at the compre- hension level must be able to manipulate that information beyond simple memorization. Leaming objectives include understanding facts and principles; interpreting material such as verbal material, charts, and graphs; paraphrasing information, and describing previously leamed material. In an adult leaming environment, the knowledge and com- prehension steps alone are not enough for demonstrating mastery of leaming and would not be acceptable for writing experiential leaming essays.

The application level is defined as the abihty to use leamed material in new and practical situations and in- cludes applying rules, methods, concepts, principles, and theories. Students at this level apply concepts aiid principles to new situations, apply theories to practical situations, and solve problems. The analysis level signals the abihty to break down material into its component parts and may include identifying those parts, analyzing the relationship between the parts, and recognizing the organizational principles involved. Leaming outcomes include recognizing unstated assumptions and logical fallacies in reasoning, distinguishing between facts and inferences, and evaluating data relevancy.

There are apparent similarities between the first four levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and David Kolb's theory concerning the expectation of adult student leaming in the classroom. Like Kolb's theory, Bloom emphasizes that the students' work needs to reflect a higher level of critical thinking and analysis, especially when they are writing at the college level. The synthesis level refers to the abihty to assemble parts to form a new whole. The adult student originates, integrates, and combines ideas into a product, plan, or proposal that is new to him or her. The objective of the synthesis level stresses creative behaviors, with an emphasis on formulating new pattems or structure. Leam- ing objectives include: integrating leaming from different areas into a plan for solving a problem, formulating a new schema for classifying objects or ideas, or proposing a plan.

The final evaluation level concems the abihty to judge the value of material for a given purpose. The judgments are based on defined criteria that are either developed by the student or given to her/him by an outside source. According to Bloom (1956), evaluation is considered the

highest level in the cognitive hierarchy because it contains elements of all the other categories, as well as conscious value judgments based on clearly defined criteria. Leaming objectives include: judging the logical consistency of written material, judging the adequacy with which conclusions are supported by data, and judging one's own performance using intemal or extemal criteria.

Kolb's Theory of Experiential Learning

David Kolb has provided a systematic tool for faculty to assess students' prior leaming for potential college credit and for students to demonstrate the knowledge they have obtained from Me experience. In his theory of experiential leaming, which involves a cycle of four processes, Kolb (1984) stated that concrete experience, reflection and observation of the experience, abstract concepts drawn from the experience, and active experimentation must ail be present in order for leaming to occur. He was influenced by the theories of John Dewey Kurt Lewin, and Jean Piaget. The premise of his theory is more leamer-centered than teacher-centered.

Students in the degree completion program are ex- pected to use the process Kolb espouses in his theory as an organizing tool for demonstrating experiential leaming in their essays. The first process of the Kolb theory is Con- crete Experience, which provides a frame of reference for discussing the knowledge obtained. However, the students need to go beyond just describing how they acquired experi- ence. There must be an obvious relationship in the written essay between knowledge and experience. For instance, it is not acceptable for a student to simply write about his or her experience as a supervisor, followed by a term paper on theories of supervision. No obvious connection between the student's experience as supervisor and those theories would be articulated.

The second process is Observation and Reflection. It is important for the student to explain how she or he ac- quired the knowledge. The faculty instructor looks for what a student read about a topic, how the student selected the reading, and how the student used the knowledge. Students are required to combine experience with the thoughts, reflections, and concepts leamed from these experiences. They provide examples of experience to illustrate what they have leamed and must make a connection between knowledge and experience by writing how the knowledge was applied to new situations.

The third process is called Abstract Conceptuahzation. Similar to one of the levels in Bloom's taxonomy, it requires students to provide evidence of comprehension in their

66 • Prior Learning Assessment

writing. It is not sufficient to just present a fact or principle. The students have to articulate, with understanding, what the facts mean in relation to their experience. In the ex- periential learning essays, faculty are looking for evidence that the student has interacted with the knowledge and in doing so, gained an understanding of it. This interaction or evidence of mental processing may take the form of the ahility to explain the suhject, break it down, analyze it, rearrange it, or combine it with other knowledge on the suhject. These intellectual skills and abilities reflect thinking processes and must be evident in students' essays.

The fourth process of Kolb's theory is Active Experi- mentation. Students are required to demonstrate the ability to generalize learning to new situations and environments. To generalize, one must derive or formulate a general con- cept or principle from a particular situation or experience. In their writing, students must move beyond the reflection process—^for example, knowing the company's policies and procedures for disciplining employees—and draw logical conclusions from the learning. The students' writing must demonstrate their ability to generalize from the situation the elements that would apply or hold true in other settings. Faculty teaching the adult students can use the application of Kolb's theory of learning to offer adult students a model for writing clear and concise papers based on critical thinking, reflection, theoretical understanding, and application.

Using Kolb's theory of experiential learning and Bloom's Taxonomy provides faculty instructors with an ef- fective way to assess prior learning and determine if the stu- dent gained knowledge from her or his life experience. In the life experience essays, students are required to identify the learning outcomes from their experience and compare it with what is taught in college courses. By determining the learning outcomes from life experience, students can begin to critically analyze the meaning of what they have learned in a larger context. Using Kolb's process together with Bloom's Taxonomy adds a depth of understanding to the student's writing as well as a breadth of demonstrated knowledge that creates a successful outcome for prior learning assessment.JCHE

References

Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, M, D., Furst, F J., Hill, W, H,, & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay,

Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.