Post 38: Pros and Cons of Bloom Taxonomy Questions in the Forums

Pros and Cons of Bloom's Taxonomy Questions in the Forums

Pros

• Gifted students love the challenge of difficult questions posed by the teacher in the forums.
• Difficult Bloom Questions in the Forums reinforce class material. 
• Questions based on the reading for instance, tells the teacher whether or not the students have been reading your lectures or reading the textbook.
• If students are not reading the lectures or readings then the teacher knows he/she may need to provide more interesting readings/lectures for the class.
• Gives teacher a chance to contextualize the material in the forum post to gain student interest before posing the question for the teacher.
• Difficult Teaching Questions helps stimulate forum discussions.
• Helps students see that the class material can be related to real life--I often ask Teacher questions like" How does Topic A relate to your life?"
• Helps the teacher see how far students has gained mastery of the material. For instance, if you ask a lot of low level questions and students get it right, but you ask a lot of high level questions and students are puzzled, then you know that students have not mastered the material.

Cons

• Students who are struggling may find the higher level Bloom Questions overwhelming and hard.
• Too many students will find the higher level questions too abstract and difficult and this may discourage students from participating in the forums.
• Students will skip the higher level questions because it requires too much research or too much time and they would rather just chat with their classmates about class material based on facts off the top of their heads.
• Many students will skip questions unless required to do so by the DQ rubric.
• If a faculty member uses too many Bloom questions, conversation may seem stilted and artificial.
• Asking so many Bloom questions may require too much work for the faculty and faculty like the students may prefer to just converse naturally with students in the forums to bond with students rather than being so teacher-centered by asking many Bloom questions.

Suggestions to improve Forums with Bloom Questions

• Use a variety of methods to relate to students in the forums. Do not just limit yourself to just asking Bloom questions in the forums. 
• Use a variety of open-ended easy questions mixed in with intermediate questions mixed in with higher level questions.
• Ask higher level questions only to the higher achieving students.
• Ask easier lower level questions to the lower level students.  
• Teachers will have done a class needs analysis during the first week of class and should know who are the higher achieving students and who are the lower level students.
• Get students interested in the forums by using a variety of forum responses such as websites, games, videos, audios. 

How do you use Bloom's Taxonomy in your classes? lessons? forums? assignments? Comment under this thread.