Biology in Bloom: Implementing Bloom's Taxonomy to Enhance Student Learning in Biology
Open accessAbstract
We developed the Blooming Biology Tool (BBT), an assessment tool based on Bloom's Taxonomy, to assist science faculty in better aligning their assessments with their teaching activities and to help students enhance their study skills and metacognition. The work presented here shows how assessment tools, such as the BBT, can be used to guide and enhance teaching and student learning in a discipline-specific manner in postsecondary education. The BBT was first designed and extensively tested for a study in which we ranked almost 600 science questions from college life science exams and standardized tests. The BBT was then implemented in three different collegiate settings. Implementation of the BBT helped us to adjust our teaching to better enhance our students' current mastery of the material, design questions at higher cognitive skills levels, and assist students in studying for college-level exams and in writing study questions at higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. From this work we also created a suite of complementary tools that can assist biology faculty in creating classroom materials and exams at the appropriate level of Bloom's Taxonomy and students to successfully develop and answer questions that require higher-order cognitive skills.
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Bloom's taxonomy provides a hierarchical list of cognitive domains that range from lower-order (remembering and understanding) to higher-order cognitive skills (applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating).
“Bloom’s taxonomy provides a hierarchical list of cognitive domains that range from lower-order (remembering and understanding) to higher-order cognitive skills (applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating; Bloom, 1956; Crowe et al., 2008; Larsen et al., 2022).”
From Reading Primary Scientific Literature: Approaches for Teaching Students in the Undergraduate STEM Classroom (2023) · cites this paper as Crowe et al., 2008
The Blooming Biology Tool provides a framework for instructors based on Bloom's taxonomy to assist with reflection and alignment.
“Instructors may wish to use the Blooming Biology Tool, which provides a framework for instructors based on Bloom’s taxonomy, to assist with this reflection and alignment (Crowe et al., 2008).”
From Reading Primary Scientific Literature: Approaches for Teaching Students in the Undergraduate STEM Classroom (2023) · cites this paper as Crowe et al., 2008
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Critical Thinking and Science Education
Bailin, S. (2002) · Science & Education · doi:10.1023/a:1016042608621 · Cited by 404 · see citing works
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Getting Under the Hood: How and for Whom Does Increasing Course Structure Work?
Eddy, S. L., & Hogan, K. A. (2014) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.14-03-0050 · Cited by 553 · see citing works
“To be confident that any gains we observed were due to the intervention and not these other sources of variation, we controlled for both exam cognitive level (cf. Crowe et al., 2008) and student prior academic achievement (for more details see Supplemental Material, section 2).”
MethodBrownell, S. E., Hekmat-Scafe, D. S., Singla, V., Chandler Seawell, P., Conklin Imam, J. F., Eddy, S. L., Stearns, T., & Cyert, M. S. (2015) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.14-05-0092 · Cited by 287 · see citing works
Characterizing College Science Assessments: The Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol
Laverty, J. T., Underwood, S. M., Matz, R. L., Posey, L. A., Carmel, J. H., Caballero, M. D., Fata-Hartley, C. L., Ebert-May, D., Jardeleza, S. E., & Cooper, M. M. (2016) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0162333 · Cited by 262 · see citing works
Eddy, S. L., Converse, M., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2015) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.14-06-0095 · Cited by 182 · see citing works
“Furthermore, the education research literature frequently does not provide sufficient detail for the proper implementation of the educational innovations presented (Borrego et al., 2013).”
BackgroundSelf-citationWhite, P. J., Larson, I., Styles, K., Yuriev, E., Evans, D. R., Rangachari, P. K., Short, J. L., Exintaris, B., Malone, D. T., Davie, B., et al. (2016) · Higher Education Research & Development · doi:10.1080/07294360.2015.1107887 · Cited by 102 · see citing works
Race with the machines: assessing the capability of generative AI in solving authentic assessments
Nguyen Thanh, B., Vo, D. T. H., Nguyen Nhat, M., Pham, T. T. T., Thai Trung, H., & Ha Xuan, S. (2023) · Australasian Journal of Educational Technology · doi:10.14742/ajet.8902 · Cited by 87 · see citing works
“However, modifications such as discipline-specific tools have been developed to improve its applicability and inter-rater agreement (Crowe et al., 2008; Zheng et al., 2008).”
BackgroundThe effect of feedback on metacognition-a randomized experiment using polling technology
Molin, F., Haelermans, C., Cabus, S., & Groot, W. (2020) · Computers & Education · doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103885 · Cited by 68 · see citing works
Mynlieff, M., Manogaran, A. L., St. Maurice, M., & Eddinger, T. J. (2014) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.13-05-0097 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Sato, B. K., Kadandale, P., He, W., Murata, P. M. N., Latif, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2014) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.14-02-0025 · Cited by 58 · see citing works
Probing Internal Assumptions of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
Larsen, T. M., Endo, B. H., Yee, A. T., Do, T., & Lo, S. M. (2022) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.20-08-0170 · Cited by 54 · see citing works
Abdullah, C., Parris, J., Lie, R., Guzdar, A., & Tour, E. (2015) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.14-10-0180 · Cited by 46 · see citing works
Freeman, S., & Parks, J. W. (2010) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.10-03-0017 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
Design and assessment of online, interactive tutorials that teach science process skills
Kramer, M., Olson, D., & Walker, J. D. (2018) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.17-06-0109 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
Lie, R., Abdullah, C., He, W., & Tour, E. (2016) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.15-09-0198 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
“Identification of the Bloom’s cognitive levels of the challenges was based on the published descriptions of the cognitive activities associated with each of the Bloom’s levels (Bloom et al., 1956; Anderson et al., 2001; Crowe et al., 2008).”
MethodKudish, P., Shores, R., McClung, A., Smulyan, L., Vallen, E. A., & Siwicki, K. K. (2016) · CBE—Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.16-01-0051 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
“These questions are meant to be difficult and address higher levels of understanding in Bloom’s taxonomy (Crowe et al., 2008).”
BackgroundGoudsouzian, L. K., & Hsu, J. L. (2023) · CBE - Life Sciences Education · doi:10.1187/cbe.22-10-0211 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
“Bloom’s taxonomy provides a hierarchical list of cognitive domains that range from lower-order (remembering and understanding) to higher-order cognitive skills (applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating; Bloom, 1956; Crowe et al., 2008; Larsen et al., 2022).”
BackgroundMethodMelanou, C., & Beege, M. (2026) · Education Sciences · doi:10.3390/educsci16040651 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
- Authors
- Crowe, A., Dirks, C., & Wenderoth, M. P.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- The Evergreen State College (US)
- Venue
- CBE—Life Sciences Education
- Published
- 2008-12
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 368-381
- ISSN
- 1931-7913 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2592046
- OpenAlex
- W2111761700
- Cited by
- 629
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 24 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 44 · 2022: 50 · 2021: 51 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 46 · 2018: 42 · 2017: 40 · 2016: 42 · 2015: 50 · 2014: 40 · 2013: 35 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 60.81
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- CBE—Life Sciences Education (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Assessment and Pedagogy
- Social Sciences › Education › Science Education and Pedagogy
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Educational Technology and Assessment
- Keywords
- Bloom's taxonomy, assessment alignment, higher-order thinking skills, biology education, metacognition, study skills, exam question design, standardized testing, instructional materials development
- MeSH terms
- Biology, Classification, Educational Measurement, Learning, Students, Teaching, Writing
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