RETRACTED:An Innovative Mobile Application for Analyzing Learning Objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy

Nowadays most learning institutions use Bloom’s Taxonomy to measure the student's understanding levels and to determine their understanding levels of the learning materials, as well as instructional strategies that will enable them to complete the activities successfully.

In this paper, we are proposing an innovative mobile application for analyzing learning objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy, which can facilitate the use of Bloom’s taxonomy and provide substantial help for educators.

Introduction

The Original Taxonomy (1956)

The following are the authors' brief explanations of these main categories in the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: [1].

Knowledge is the recalling of specifics and universals, methods and processes, or patterns, structures, and settings.

Comprehension involves knowing what is being communicated and being able to use it without necessarily relating it to other information or understanding its full implications.

The Application involves the application of abstractions to particular and concrete contexts.

The Analysis is the breakdown of a communication into its constituent elements so that the relative hierarchy of ideas is clear and/or the relations between ideas are explicit.

Synthesis is the process of combining elements and parts into a whole.

Evaluation involves making judgments about the value of materials and methods.

There is a 1984 edition of Handbook One on display in Calhoun 116 of the CFT Library. See its ACORN record for call number and availability.

The Revised Taxonomy (2001)

In 2001, a group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists, instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists published a revision of Bloom's Taxonomy titled A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. With this title, Bloom's original title moves away from the somewhat static notion of "educational objectives" to a more dynamic understanding of classification.

The authors of the revised taxonomy underscore this dynamism, using verbs and gerunds to label their categories and subcategories (rather than the nouns of the original taxonomy). These “action words” describe the cognitive processes by which thinkers encounter and work with knowledge (Figure 1) [2,3]:

Figure 1: Bloom’s Taxonomy Order of Learning Skills.

1. Remember: Recognizing, Recalling
2. Understand: Interpreting, Exemplifying, Classifying, Summarizing, Inferring Comparing, Explaining
3. Apply: Executing, Implementing
4. Analyze: Differentiating, Organizing, Attributing
5. Evaluate: Checking, Critiquing
6. Create: Generating, Planning, Producing

Bloom’s taxonomy revisited

In October 2023, Oregon State University recently had a page about “Advancing meaningful learning in the age of AI “, the article talks about helping educators navigate the increasing prevalence of AI tools. It discusses how the university created a new version of Bloom's Taxonomy to help faculty evaluate AI capabilities and how they might impact the way students learn. The article also discusses how the university is helping faculty transition from a feeling of overwhelming to a place of greater confidence and action. Additionally, the article discusses how the university is helping faculty to adapt to teaching and learning in this new age [4] (Table 1).

In 2013, TSL Education Ltd. published a book titled “How to use Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Classroom” which discussed the six major categories of cognitive thought. The taxonomy was developed by a team of American educators led by Benjamin S. Bloom. The purpose of education was “to change the thoughts, feelings, and actions of students”. The taxonomy was developed to help students learn [5].

System design

• In writing learning objectives, how can Bloom's Taxonomy be helpful?
• Learning objectives for courses can be described and written using Bloom's Taxonomy.
• Students' understanding levels can be determined using this tool, as well as instructional strategies that will enable them to complete the activities successfully.
• Developing activities that build from simple to increasingly complex forms of knowledge is supported.
• Students demonstrate a given level of knowledge through the use of a central question and action verbs.

Example:

Remembering: Can the student recall or remember the information? They would be able to define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce, or state.

Our system automatically analyzes the lesson objectives in a matter of seconds. It identifies the types of verbs used in the objectives and indicates which Bloom's Taxonomy levels the objectives meet. The system saves time for current educators and enhances the understanding of the lesson objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy for educators. Additionally, the system performed smoothly across mobile, desktop, and laptop platforms during testing.

Our System in-depth: The application flow is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Application Flow.

The user is promoted to a screen with a dialog box that asks him/her to type the lesson objective they wish to analyze.

There are two samples that the user can select from.

The user can type the SLO directly in the Text to analyze area.

The user can upload a syllabus file

The user can then spell-check the SLO.

The user can then submit it.

The results analyzed will be shown.

In case there is an error, the system will display a user-friendly message and ask the user to re-enter the sentence. During the test, we did not encounter any error messages.

We can see samples of Bloom's Taxonomy Cognitive Levels and the revised Bloom’s taxonomy as illustrated in Figures 3,4 [6,7].

Figure 3: Bloom’s Taxonomy Cognitive Levels Explained.

Figure 4: Bloom's Taxonomy (revised).

The levels of learning according to Bloom's taxonomy are interdependent logically:

• In order to understand a concept, you should be able to remember it,
• In order to apply a concept, you should be able to understand it.
• In order to analyze it, you should be able to apply it.
• In order to evaluate its effect, you should have analyzed it.
• In order to create something based on a concept, you should have remembered, understood, applied, analyzed, and evaluated the concept.

Analysis of the student learning outcome:

Below is the interface for “Analyze Sentence" (Figure 5). It contains a text input box where we can enter the sentence to analyze and the buttons Submit, Cancel, and a button to try a “Sample Sentence”.

Figure 5: Analyze sentence interface.

Analysis was performed by the exception handling mechanism and the written programs utilize exception handling to analyze the sentence.

After submitting the sentence for analysis, the sentence is highlighted in the following colors: Green for “Action Verb”, Blue for “Synonyms” and Red for "Technical Terms”, as seen in the Analyze Sentence interface (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Analyzed Sentence.

Figure 7 shows the result of the analysis, at which level the verb is located within Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Suggested Action Verb.

Figure 7: Analysis Result.

The figure shows a table that categorizes verbs under Bloom’s Taxonomy with associated levels:

"EXPLAIN" is classified under Level 2 (Understand) with a frequency of 1.

"WRITE" is classified under Level 3 (Apply) with a frequency of 1.

Identified Verbs:

The system found the verb "UTILIZE", which is categorized under "Verbs Found," with a frequency of 1.

Synonyms Analysis:

"UTILIZE" was mapped to Level 3 (Apply).

The suggested alternative verb presented is "USE".

Another very useful feature in our system which allows the educator to upload a syllabus.

We can either delete the file from the files list or process the file.

After submitting a syllabus file, it shows a “Process Files” screen (Figure 8) that contains the “File Name”, “File Extension”, “Date Modified”, a green button to “Process the file” and a Red Button to “Delete the file”.

Figure 8: Process Files.

The Course Learning Outcomes and the Students' Learning Objectives will be inserted in the text area to be analyzed when submit is clicked. (Figures 9-11).

Figure 9: Process Files.

Figure 10: Original Sentence.

Figure 11: Highlighted Sentences.

Impact of the system’s design

Our system was designed to simplify the creation and evaluation of lesson objectives by aligning them with Bloom’s Taxonomy, enhancing lesson planning, and ensuring learning objectives are measurable. The design has the following implications:

Efficiency and Standardization

• Automating verb identification and classification ensures consistency in objective formulation. In this way, educators save time by quickly aligning objectives with higher-order thinking skills.
• There is a pedagogical impact in helping novice educators structure their lessons using cognitive-level-appropriate objectives.
• It supports curriculum developers by maintaining alignment with educational standards such as Common Core or Higher Education Accreditation Guidelines.

Performance evaluation

We have used this to check course learning objectives individually, or by uploading a syllabus, and it was very effective and saved a lot of time. For educators who do not have a good idea about Bloom’s taxonomy, it was very helpful and educated them about how to create measurable Bloom’s taxonomy learning objectives and help to improve the quality of the lessons, questions, activities, and assessments planned.

Regarding the limitation of the syllabus size, the system brings a file size limit, for example, 5MB or 10 MB, so that one does not have to deal with or experience slowdowns in processing. There are also file format constraints, where the system may only support certain formats, such as PDF and DOCX. Lastly, there exists parsing complexity, if the syllabus is too big or differently formatted, the system may fail to extract lesson objectives correctly.

As we can see here in Figure 12, the Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs found in the syllabus are displayed in three categories:

Figure 12: Verbs Found.

• The Level Number for each Verb.
• The Level for each verb.
• The Frequency of each Verb.

As we can see in Figure 13, the synonyms of Bloom’s Taxonomy are presented as follows:

Figure 13: Synonyms Found.

• Verbs are found in the syllabus.
• The Level Number for each verb corresponds to the synonym.
• The Level for each verb corresponds to the synonym.
• The Frequency of each synonym.

Word Frequency is visualized as shown in Figure 14, the chart showing the top 10 most frequent Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs used.

Figure 14: Verb Frequency.

Conclusion

In this paper, we proposed a mobile application for analyzing learning objectives based on Bloom's Taxonomy. The application could automatically identify the type of verbs in the objectives and show which levels of Bloom's Taxonomy the objectives reached. It saves time for the current educator and strengthens the ability to lesson objectives with Bloom's Taxonomy for educators. It was also very useful and saved a lot of time. To educators who had little idea about Bloom's taxonomy, it was very helpful and educated them on how to create measurable Bloom's taxonomy learning objectives that helped in improving the quality of lessons, questions, activities, and assessments they plan.

Future work

We are planning to use the NLP to assist in the evaluation of the course learning objectives, suggest Bloom’s Taxonomy Action verbs, and use AI to enhance our system.

1. Bloom BS, Engelhart MD, Furst EJ, Hill WH, Krathwohl DR. Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay; 1956. Available from: https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=1316641
2. Anderson LW, Krathwohl DR. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon; 2001. Available from: https://quincycollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/Anderson-and-Krathwohl_Revised-Blooms-Taxonomy.pdf
3. Bloom’s Taxonomy Revisited. Version 2.0, 2024. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.
4. Oregon State Ecampus. Advancing meaningful learning in the age of AI. Sep 25, 2024. Available from: https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/news/advancing-meaningful-learning-in-the-age-of-ai/
5. Gershon M. How to use Bloom’s Taxonomy in the classroom. TES Connect Digital Publishing; 2013. Available from: https://www.participationandlifelonglearning.co.uk/pluginfile.php/33818/mod_resource/content/0/How-to-use-Blooms-Taxonomy-in-the-classroom.pdf
6. Vanderbilt University. Bloom’s Taxonomy. Center for Teaching. Available from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/Blooms-Taxonomy.pdf
7. McNulty N. Introduction to Bloom's Taxonomy. Niall McNulty. Dec 12, 2019. Available from: https://www.niallmcnulty.com/2019/12/introduction-to-blooms-taxonomy/