A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

44 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
the students’ increasing competence (Bingham, 1999). Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives (1979) may be helpful in articulating levels of expected academic performance
when writing learning outcomes.
Bloom’s Taxonomy (1979) covers six levels of cognitive ability increasing from
knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis and synthesis through to evaluation.
McLean and Looker (2006) at the Learning and Teaching Unit at the University of New
South Wales in Australia have presented a list of verbs to enable academic staff to
construct learning outcomes which align with Bloom’s Taxonomy shown above. Some of
the verbs they present are shown below, linked to the six levels of cognitive abilities. An
interesting exercise may be to examine these verbs and consider how they could align
with levels of learning.
1 Knowledge
What do we expect learners to know? The verbs indicated may, for example, be used in
the stem of assignment questions:
record examine reproduce arrange
define outline state present
describe identify show quote
2 Comprehension
This covers learners’ ability to convey what they understand. Can learners interpret what
they know? Can they extrapolate from what they know? Consider the use of the following
verbs in work to be done by learners:
discuss clarify classify explain
translate extend interpret review
select summarise contrast estimate
3 Application
This covers a learner’s ability to use a theory or information in a new situation. Can
learners see the relevance of this idea to that situation? Verbs to use may include: