Let E-Learning Objectives Bloom - LearnTechLib

5 downloads 48836 Views 39KB Size Report
suggest that single 'best learning paths' may be an illusion... Introduction ... Collaborate on slideshows/ presentation tools. Hosting and sharing images. Reading.
Let E-Learning Objectives Bloom Koen DePryck Center for Adult Education Antwerpen-Zuid Antwerp, Belgium [email protected] Liesbeth De Paepe Center for Adult Education Het Perspectief Ghent, Belgium [email protected] Jan Strybol Center for Adult Education Het Perspectief Ghent, Belgium [email protected]

Abstract: In this paper we look at tools and good practices (currently) available in distance learning to attain the learning objectives in Blooms’ taxonomy. We set out to identify if and how e-learning may offer added value and insights in some domains of the taxonomy. And we suggest that single ‘best learning paths’ may be an illusion...

Introduction Bloom’s Taxonomy is a system for the classification of learning objectives in which different levels of learning are specified and are listed in order of increasing complexity. Benjamin Bloom proposed three domains in his theory: the affective (receiving, responding, valuing, organizing, and characterizing), the psychomotor and the cognitive (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, evaluation) domains. For our research, we focused on the six levels of the cognitive domain. The major advantages of Bloom’s Taxonomy are the fact that it is well-known among a large group of people in the field of education and the adaptability to digital contexts. We chose to depart from the revised taxonomy by Anderson and Krathwohl because this version dates from 2001, whereas the original taxonomy was written in 1956 and has been criticized on the part of the highest two levels. The Anderson and Krathwohl revision considers creativity to be of a higher cognitive ranking than evaluation. Another reason for using the revised taxonomy is that it has formulated the actions connected with each taxonomic level as verbs describing concrete activities and processes.

The Study One could imagine the taxonomy as a staircase. Each step brings the learning process to a higher and more complex level, and always includes the lower steps. 1. Remembering: Recalling, retrieving, recognizing ideas, concepts, procedures 2. Understanding: Exemplifying, inferring, interpreting, translating to similar situations 3. Applying: implementing, carrying out, applying to specific situations 4. Analysing: breaking a complex idea into its constituent parts, determining the relationships between those parts 5. Evaluating: making judgments based on criteria and standards 6. Creating: Putting together and reorganizing elements to form a new and coherent pattern

- 953 -

The descriptions above are mainly related to activities and objectives in face-to-face teaching, but they don’t account for some of the more recent developments and strategies used in blended and distance learning. In order to address these shortcomings, Andrew Churches revised the taxonomy again and digitized it. These efforts resulted in Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, a description of which can be found on his excellent prizewinning wiki: http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+and+ICT+tools In order to make the digital taxonomy operational for blended learning and distance learning, we organised the 6 levels of the cognitive domain and the most common tools for digital learning horizontally in a grid. Vertically, we listed the most-common e-learning tools as described in the TACCLE-handbook. TACCLE (Teacher’s Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments) is a EU funded Comenius multilateral project, which aims at helping teachers to develop their own e-learning materials (www.taccle.eu) We chose a tool at random to explore the possibilities of using these tools for designing learning activities that correspond to each of the cognitive learning objectives. We expected the tool (social bookmarking, eg. delicious) to reach only the second cognitive level of learning. Our work lead to the following grid: Blogging Micro-blogging Wiki’s

Podcasting Screen capture + screen casting Video hosting + video sharing Presentation sharing Social bookmarking

remembering

understanding

applying

analyzing

look up words in a dictionary and recognizing/ recalling them

Exemplifying these same words with images

Using this vocabulary in new sentences/co ntexts

Organizing sets of new words in mindmaps / structuring the new words in word classes

Bookmarking/ Naming/ Finding/ Highlighting/ retrieving/ listing interesting websites

Classifying/ comparing/ commenting on/… certain links

Sharing/ editing/ loading/ implementin g/ using these websites

integrating/ linking/ mindmapping/…

evaluating

Critiquing/ detecting/…

Collaborate on slideshows/ presentation tools Hosting and sharing images Reading RSS feeds Designing surveys Editing images and bitmaps Private social networks LMS/LCMS Authoring tools …

Table 1: Grid combining Bloom’s taxonomy with a list of tools from the TACCLE-handbook

- 954 -

Creating

The rubric we chose, is that of Bookmarking (Bookmarks Toolbar in Internet Explorer or Bookmarks in Firefox) and Social Bookmarking (eg. Delicious). Andrew Churches defines this rubric as “examining the process of recording and remembering key sites and URL’s”. This activity can take place in the first cognitive level, namely “remembering”. This means that users simply add sites to Bookmarks Toolbar/Bookmarks or add URL to a social bookmarking site, such as Delicious. The locally stored bookmarks aren’t commented on or structured in any way, but they are summed up, listed. In his “Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy”, Andrew Churches describes some sublevels before the second level in the original taxonomy, “understanding”, is reached. If the user organizes his/her bookmarks into labeled folders, or adds tags (keywords), comments or notes, the activity advances into the next cognitive sublevel. In this stage, the validity of the resources isn’t checked yet. A next sublevel is reached when a student adds comments or suitable keywords to URL and shares the bookmarks with all members of his/her network. This student attempts to get valid information, but the filtering skills which are needed in this respect are still rather limited. In a further stage, that is on the level of “understanding”, this same user can give detailed comments on certain URL, or add appropriate keyword tags. The user’s comments can, for example, contain a coherent summary of the resource, or be appropriate or useful in any other way. Moreover, the sites are now bookmarked on the basis of validity and are only shared with a selected and appropriate group of members of the user’s network.

Fuzzy learning paths Trying to find an answer to the question if the tools for (social) bookmarking really cannot reach a higher cognitive level than “understanding”, we ended up with some remarks: - Applying specific URL from eg. Delicious to specific situations, such as referring to them in a presentation, or implementing them as resource material in a new web site, doesn’t that lift the knowledge filtered from (social) bookmarking tools to the third cognitive level, namely “applying”? - Is the possibility of “ranking” in eg. Delicious, and thus the ability of critiquing, judging, reviewing, validating, not a way of “evaluating”, the fifth cognitive level? While this is probably also true when mapping the taxonomy to F2F teaching, it is obvious that the (often unused) possibilities of software create a rather fuzzy mapping whereby the model of a staircase may simply not apply. The implication is that it may simply be impossible to design a single ‘best possible’ learning path through the grid. This means that automation of the process of designing trajectories based on learner profiles and involving multiple tools may require fuzzy logic of the type our washers use to balance factors such as load, temperature, amount of soap, degree of pollution, etc.

Conclusions Combining Bloom’s taxonomy and an inventory of e-tools in a grid is a simple yet powerful way to detect ‘gaps’ in tools we still lack. It is also a good strategy to look for interesting ‘improper’ use of existing tools. However, the fuzzy map that arises also leads us to suggest that there may not exist a single best possible learning path or learning trajectory. Further automation of creating learning trajectories based on learner profiles may require fuzzy logic.

References Anderson, L.W., and D. Krathwohl (Eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: a Revision of Bloom' s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. NY:Longman. Churches, A. (2008) Welcome to the 21st Century. Retrieved from http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/21st+Century+Learners

- 955 -

Hughes, J. (ed) (2009) Teachers’ Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments. Brussels:GO! (www.taccle.eu)

- 956 -