Trần Đình Gia Bảo - 2091401111006 - TDIP201 - Graduate School of Ho Chi Minh Open University

How Action Verbs for Educational Objectives Are Applied to Designing Syllabi

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a framework for categorizing educational objectives that classifies thinking according to
six cognitive levels of complexity. Many teachers have used this model to plan their lessons and develop learning
outcomes in a way that encourages their students’ higher-order thinking starting from low-level cognitive skills. Anderson
& Krathwohl (2001) revised the model, with six categories of the cognitive process dimension changed from nouns to
verbs: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate and Create.

For the cognitive domain, a teacher can choose from a list of measurable verbs to write a learning outcome for the
syllabus of a course (Miller-Young, 2018). These verbs are arranged on a continuum from simple to complex. At the low
end, the students are expected to demonstrate low-level, introductory skills while at the high end, they are asked to
demonstrate complex thinking skills. The components of a learning outcome include the measurable verb from Bloom’s
taxonomy and the knowledge/skill/attitude a teacher want their students to acquire or construct. The common syntax is:
By the end of the course, the students will be able to + measurable verb + knowledge/skill/attitude the teacher expect
them to gain. The verbs are measurable in that they can be demonstrated by the students and assessed by the teacher. For
each process category of the cognitive process dimension, the teacher can establish a different objective of instruction
(Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001): with Remember, the students are expected to retrieve information from their memory;
with Understand, they are expected to form meaning from instructional messages; with Apply, they are expected to apply
the learned knowledge to doing a task; they can demonstrate that they can Analyze by breaking material into parts and
deciding how these parts relate to each other; with Evaluate, they are expected to form judgments using a set of criteria or
standards; as for Create, they are expected to put elements together to invent a product.

According to Sabatura (2013), Bloom’s Taxonomy can assist teachers in designing syllabi since it explains the
learning process: learners must remember a concept before understanding it; to apply it, they must understand it; before
they analyze it, they must have analyzed it; and in order to create a product, they must have gone through an evaluation
procedure. It is, however, not necessary to go through all the process category for each concept in a course. A teacher
should consider the level of the learners in the course before designing a course. For example, if the course is an
introductory course, the learning objectives may target the lower-order skills since the goal is for the students to gain basic
knowledge. However, if the course is for graduate students, who are advanced learners, they should try to attain higher-
order learning objectives and lower-order ones may make them feel bored and unchallenged.
 Trần Đình Gia Bảo - 2091401111006 - TDIP201 - Graduate School of Ho Chi Minh Open University

REFERENCES
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's
taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Miller-Young, J. (2018). A Guide to Learning Outcomes at the University of Alberta. Canada: University of Alberta.
Sabatura, J. (2013). Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives. https://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-
taxonomy/