Bloom's Taxonomy, Bloom's Taxonomy in Technical Content Development

This is a re-print of the article with permission by the author Wasique Robbani. It was originally published in the STC India chapter's newsletter, Indus. It is currently under construction.

Introduction

Technical writers provide information enabling users to learn and apply various technologies. In the endeavor to enable users, technical writers often need to use different strategies of classification, presentation, and structuring for the different types of information. However, in most cases such classifications or decisions about the best method of presentation and optimum structure are guided by instinct and are rarely heuristic.

In this article, we present an established classification of information called Bloom’s taxonomy (of educational objectives), which can help technical writers make decisions about content classification. Bloom’s taxonomy classifies information into different categories depending on the complexity level of skills to which the particular piece of information corresponds. Dr. Benjamin Bloom and a host of other psychologists and educational experts created this classification after long years of research. This system of classification provides a universally effective strategy for creating all types of modules to impart learning.

(For details on Bloom's original work, see Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals; pp. 201-207; B. S. Bloom (Ed.) David McKay Company, Inc. 1956.)

In the remaining sections of this article, we will explain how you can use Bloom’s taxonomy while writing manuals to enhance the learning experience of users. We will also explain how you can access a tested knowledge base by using the existing corpus of information on Bloom’s taxonomy that has been extensively used and verified by experts.

Understanding Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy classifies information into the following categories in increasing order of complexity:
1. Knowledge
2. Comprehension
3. Application
4. Analysis
5. Synthesis
6. Evaluation

The figure illustrates the different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy and their relationship.


Knowledge refers to all types of facts and definitions. For example, the definition of commands and terms represent information at the level of knowledge. In general, any information or piece of content that learners or users recollect, identify, and define is at the knowledge level. For instance, if you are writing a manual for an e-mail client, the definition of rules will be at the knowledge level. Similarly, for an operating system, the definition of a command to list the directories will be at the knowledge level.

Comprehension requires understanding of concepts and the ability to distinguish between examples and non-examples. Content that explains various features belong to this level. For example, if you are describing the rules feature of an e-mail client software, the piece of content will be at the comprehension level. You will usually provide examples and non-examples to enable users to be able to distinguish a concept at this level.

Application specifies the performance of tasks to attain a specific result based on previously acquired knowledge and understanding. For example, the steps to perform any procedure will be an application-level content. If you elaborate the procedure for creating a rule in an e-mail client, you are writing an application-level content.

Analysis involves the examination of causes and the ability to identify and rectify errors, enhance performance, and determine reasons for possible deviations from intended results. For example, you might provide information that will allow users to identify why a rule is not working as intended and rectify the same. The ability to analyze, as also the ability to synthesize and evaluate, is mostly attained through experience and by the coaching of domain experts. However, technical documents can expedite the process of attaining expertise by presenting appropriate hints and tips from expert users.

Synthesis requires the ability to use the acquired knowledge and the extant experience to create new ideas and concepts. For example, you might provide information that allows users to combine the rules feature with the organize feature to identify and store messages from a specific source in a special format. Synthesis-level knowledge might also be acquired through experience and you might only provide pointers.

Evaluation specifies the ability to examine results and processes to determine the efficiency of a system or product. For example, you might provide information to enable users to evaluate two different e-mail clients to select a suitable client for a given situation. As might already be obvious, most evaluation-level information will be acquired through experience. However, it is still possible to provide information by modeling expert users.

Each of the above categories of content needs a specific structure and approach for best results. For example, content for application level might be more appropriately presented as generic steps followed by a specific example. Similarly, content for comprehension level will be more effective with examples, non-examples, and diagrams, when appropriate. You, as technical writers, can use the taxonomy both at the time of design and development as well as during maintenance to make the manuals more effective.

Applying the Taxonomy

These sections discuss you how to:
1. Identify the Bloom’s taxonomy level for a particular content
2. Identify the appropriate strategy to present and structure the content in the context of the identified Bloom’s taxonomy level.

You might have noticed that content at the various levels of Bloom’s taxonomy enable users to perform various tasks. For example, a knowledge-level content allows users to recall or define and a comprehension-level content enables users to understand or distinguish a concept. Similarly, an application-level content allows users to apply or change something. Therefore, to identify the level of content you want to write, you simply need to find out what the content enables the user to do or, in other words, the aim or objective of the content. Most definitely, you will come up with a verb, such as defines, converts, explains, applies, analyzes, or combines as the answer. This then partly defines the aim or objective of the content. We will use the word objective in this article because it is the conventional usage.
The keyword column of the following table lists many of the verbs that define the objective of the content. The Category column lists the Bloom’s taxonomy level that maps to a set of verbs. You can use this table as a guide to define the level of your content. For example, you might conclude that a piece of content you want to write will enable users to distinguish between two concepts, on looking up in the table you will find that the verb distinguishes corresponds to comprehension. Therefore, you can safely decide that the piece of content is of the comprehension level.

Keyword	Category
defines, describes, identifies, knows, labels, lists, matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes, reproduces, selects, states	Knowledge
comprehends, converts, defends, distinguishes, estimates, explains, extends, generalizes, gives	Comprehension
applies, changes, computes, constructs, demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates, predicts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses	Application
analyzes, breaks down, compares, contrasts, diagrams, deconstructs, differentiates, discriminates, distinguishes, identifies, illustrates, infers, outlines, relates, selects, separates	Analysis
categorizes, combines, compiles, composes, creates, devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies, organizes, plans, rearranges, reconstructs, relates, reorganizes, revises, rewrites, summarizes, tells, writes	Synthesis
appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts, criticizes, critiques, defends, describes, discriminates, evaluates, explains, interprets, justifies, relates, summarizes, supports	Evaluation

Although the above table simplifies the task of defining an objective that helps you present the content at the appropriat level of complexity, you should be cautious while identifying the keyword. For example, the definition of a command in a command reference might lead you to think that it is an application-level content. However, you might realize that a user will not be able to use a command based only on its definition. The user might need to have information regarding other related commands and their sequence. As a result, you might realize that you need a content piece that maps to an application-level objective and provides information on the use of the command to perform a task.

Developing New Content

As a technical writer, you will either design and create new documents or maintain an existing document. You can apply Bloom’s taxonomy in both the situations. The following sections elaborate on these two situations.

As you have seen, Bloom’s taxonomy acts as an aid while designing a document by allowing you to identify the levels of content. You can use the taxonomy to finetune the initial list of objectives that the development engineers, testing team, and expert users provide. It also helps in asking constructive and knowledge-based questions to determine if the list of objectives is complete. For example, if you are documenting an e-mail client, you might observe that one of the tasks that users will be able to do is to create rules. You will immediately realize that the task is at the application level. You will also realize that before creating rules, users must know what a rule is and then understand how and when to use a rule. Therefore, you will conclude that you need to add content for two objectives at knowledge and comprehension levels.

You might also decide that in certain cases, depending on the user’s experience level, you can do away with content mapped to lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. For example, for the objective to create an e-mail, you might realize that the users already know what an e-mail is. You might, therefore, decide that objectives at the knowledge and comprehension levels are not required.

You can generalize the above process of determining objectives and then analyzing the objectives to refine them further in the following way:
1. Determine what the users will be able to do. This constitutes the main objective, also called target objective in the Instructional Design world.
2. Determine the information users need to be able to perform the task defined by the target objective. You might determine other objectives, which are called enabling objectives because they enable the target objective.
3. Decide if all the enabling objectives need to be covered after analyzing the user profile and consulting the expert users.
4. Determine the Bloom’s taxonomy level for each objective and state the strategy you will use to cover the objective.

In the above process, you will come up with a design document. This document might have different formats for each of you. However, the content will definitely be the target and enabling objectives and the probable strategies. Here, we provide a sample design for an e-mail client.

Target Objective: Use rules to manage mail messages

Enabling Objective	Bloom’s Level	Strategy
Define rules.	Knowledge	Define rules
Understand rules.	Comprehension	Explain the use of rules.
Create a rule.	Application	Provide steps to create rules of different types
Troubleshoot rules.	Analysis	Provide scenarios that might lead to erros and exceptions and their solution.
Specify rules to identify mail messages from specific sources.	Synthesis	Provide steps to use rules to format mails from specific senders

As you might have realized by now, some of the enabling objectives might need their own enabling objectives, as a result, becoming target objectives themselves. For example, the target objective ‘Use rules to manage mail messages’ has an enabling objective ‘Specify rules to identify mail messages from specific sources’, which will need a further enabling objective ‘Format mail messages’. As a result, the design that you arrive at in the first instance might need more refinement.

You will also notice that a few target objectives will map to one chapter while for few others you might have more than one chapter. Similarly, a few enabling objectives might also map to one or more chapters, while some might map to topics or sections. In the above table, for example, the enabling objective ‘Specify rules to identify mail messages from specific sources’ will need another objective ‘Format mails’. You might decide that the objective Format mail messages need to be a chapter in itself and not included in the chapters for the objective ‘Creating rules’. You might decide that it will be covered in a chapter that comes before the chapter on creating rules.

Maintaining Existing Content

You might have to maintain an existing document that you own but did not create. The problem with such legacy documents is that a complete overhaul of structure might not be possible. In spite of the constraints, you will find that you can usually restructure the documents without too many changes to the content. You can reuse the contents and simply move them to a new structure. When appending new content warranted by the addition or change of features, commands, or user interface-related information, you might at least add the new content in accordance with the taxonomy and change only the related chunks of existing contents, if possible.

One good strategy for enhancing existing documents is to add notes and tips to include analysis-, synthesis-, and evaluation-level content. Notes and tips are useful because they stand out from other content and do not affect the structure of the content. This way, you add value without changing the structure. For example, in an existing content on creating rules, you can add a tip that rules can be used to identify messages from specific users by marking the messages in different colors. You can also make existing content effective by simply changing the presentation. For example, if you find that an application-level content has been presented as a concept, you can go ahead and add steps and procedures to make the content easy-to-understand and application-worthy.

Conclusion

Bloom’s taxonomy can guide technical writers to design their manuals by classifying content into manageable chunks of six different levels, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It also provides a heuristic mechanism to identify presentation of content by mapping them to tasks that users need to be able to perform. Technical writers can also use this taxonomy to define the structure of their documents as chapters, topics, and sections, as well as, the sequence of different topics and sections within a chapter.

A conscious application of Bloom’s taxonomy while designing and updating documents will certainly help enhance the experience of users. It will also empower the technical writers with a foundation to put forward their arguments regarding the structure, format, and content of documents they write. They, therefore, need not be dictated by each and every argument put forward by programmers and support teams, who though sincere in their arguments might not be aware of the implications on users. The honest aspirations of technical writers to help the users of products will, therefore, have an impact and in the process award the respect that is due to the technical writer community as a whole.

Copyright © 2005 by Indus (STC India chapter newsletter) and Wasique Robbani. All rights reserved.

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