By the end of this guide, you'll be able to:
- Use Bloom's Taxonomy and its associated verbs to create learning outcomes
Now’s the time to design your own outcomes for your content idea. Try and create a learning outcome that meets the first key learning point you’d like to cover. If it helps, write your key learning points from the perspective of what you want to teach and then think about what you really want your learners to be able to do with the knowledge or skill. To get you in the right mindset, it can be helpful to think of your learners by writing the contextual component phrase
“by the end of this (content), you will be able to”
To write your first outcome, use the action verbs available in the first two categories of Blooms Taxonomy; ‘Remembering’ and ‘Understanding’. There are 22 verbs to choose from in our Blooms Digital Action Verb List e.g ‘to list something’ from the remembering category or ‘to summarise something’ from the understanding category (notably, there are lots of other verbs associated with each level - just Google “Bloom's taxonomy verbs” and there are loads of examples available).
Once you’ve written your first outcome, move on to your next key learning point, perhaps using the next two categories of ‘Applying’ and ‘Analyzing’. And so on, until you’ve covered all the key learning points that you’d like to highlight in your content. Hopefully, by the end of your content, learners will be achieving things at the higher order levels of learning: ‘Evaluating’ and ‘Creating’.
Important Things to Note
Usually, a single piece of content will have between 3-5 learning outcomes. But it’s not a problem if you have less or more... it might be a particularly short or long piece of content. Also, don’t worry about moving up Bloom’s Taxonomy categories with each outcome. If the verbs available in the next category along don’t fit what learners will achieve, that’s fine. Use a verb and category that does fit. Remember, it’s just a general rule that learners start off towards the lower order thinking outcomes and move up to higher ones as the content and their learning progress. Rules can be broken if they don’t fit.
Additionally, when it comes to designing content and activities, if you get inspiration to set an activity that doesn’t align with your original outcome. Tweak or change the outcome by using a different verb or by rewriting it. It’s important your outcomes align with your content and activities as this is what learners use to gauge whether your content is suitable for them.
Get Feedback
Once you’ve created your learning outcomes for your content idea, it is useful to share them with a few trusted folks for feedback. Alternatively, you can share your outcomes with us for help and feedback by using the chat feature on our site or by emailing hello@ministryoftesting.com.