As you progress through your first year of college, you will notice that your level of comprehension and reflection begin to deepen as you engage with material and apply it to your experience in order to retain and synthesize it. If you pay close attention, you will discover that Bloom’s taxonomy is often the framework that college instructors use to design classroom activities and out-of-class assignments. No matter what the topic is, this framework will help move you to deeper understanding and an ability to apply what you learn to other situations and concepts. Now we’ll take a closer look at Bloom’s taxonomy and then we’ll take a concept you’re likely to encounter in your first year of college—diversity—and match your cognitive development of the concept to Bloom’s taxonomy.
high-impact practices 2, 4
Concept: Diversity
Level 1 (Knowledge) Read a dictionary definition of the word diversity.
Level 2 (Comprehension) Explain the concept of diversity to another student without reading the dictionary definition.
Level 3 (Application) Write about all the types of human diversity that exist within the student body at your college or university and possible categories of human diversity that are not represented there.
Level 4 (Analysis) Conduct two separate analyses. The first analysis will be why your institution has large numbers of certain types of students. The second analysis will be why your institution has small numbers of other types of students.
Level 5 (Synthesis) Write a paper that combines your findings in Level 4 and hypothesizes what components of your college or university culture either attract or repel certain students.
Level 6 (Evaluation) In your paper, evaluate the institution’s “diversity profile” and argue for or against change in the way your campus supports diversity.