Level of learning audit for exam questions

Find out which level of thinking on Bloom’s taxonomy your exam questions are assessing.

By Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning

In this article, we'll revisit Bloom's Taxonomy to ensure your exam questions are effectively assessing the necessary types of thinking for students to demonstrate their proficiency with learning outcomes. The taxonomy has evolved over time, but it still provides a clear hierarchy of levels categorizing different levels of cognitive skills that students use in their learning process.

 The current structure of Bloom’s taxonomy starts from the basic "remember" and moves up through "understand," "apply," "analyze," and "evaluate," to the highest level, "create."

image chart - Bloom's Taxonomy

 

Determining the Level of Your Exam Questions

To ensure your exam questions align with the desired level of Bloom's taxonomy, first identify the complexity level of each learning outcome. Then, verify that the questions assessing those outcomes match the same level of complexity.

 Below are some questions which may give you clues to level of complexity of a quiz question:

  • Could someone answer this by reading but not really understanding a textbook entry on the topic? If so, you may want to change it.
  • Does this question ask a student to use knowledge or skill in a context they haven’t encountered it in before? If so, it’s in the Apply category or above.
  • If you asked a student to justify their response to this question, would they have to go deeper than “that’s what the textbook/you said”? If so, it is likely Apply or above.
  • Is this question focused on relationships between things or the relationship between a part and a whole of something? If yes, it is likely Analyze or above.
  • Does this question require the student to explore significance? If so, it is likely Evaluate.
  • Does this question direct students to generate something new that has value? If yes, you have a Create question.

If you determine that some of your questions need to be changed, you can write questions specific to the level of Bloom’s taxonomy that you intend to assess.

Title image credit: website/author
This article was created with the assistance of AI tools, as described in the GMCTL AI Disclosure Statement

This resource is shared by the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL), University of Saskatchewan, under a CC BY-NC-SA license.