Overview

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom published a framework for categorizing educational goals: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Revised in 2011 by a group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists, the taxonomy describes the dynamic ways in which thinkers encounter and work with knowledge.

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy in learning design leads to well-organized objectives that are clear to both instructors and learners. Furthermore, it ensures that information and skills become more sticky, as learners are taken on progressively more and more cognitively stimulating activities.

This module makes learning objectives clear to learners with the lesson tracker at the bottom of each page. Additionally, the learner’s knowledge is applied in increasingly higher versions of Bloom’s Taxonomy as the module progresses. For instance, the learner begins with simple recall, and progresses towards multiple choice practice, and finally ends with evaluation.

Education researchers Mary Hauser and Sarah Schneider Kavanagh describe how Competency-Based Teacher Education is a paradigm used to train future teachers: “practitioners of CBTE work to identify and define skills or “competencies” necessary for novice teachers to learn and break those competencies down into learnable and practice-able pieces” (2019). Being an “effective teacher” is complex, but through CBTE, it is possible to break down and practice specific skills associated with “effective teaching”.

I designed this learning module modeled after “Competency-based teacher education Principles. For example, Module 2 is focused on “effective communication”. Being an “effective communicator” is a complex task, but the module gives learners the opportunity to practice a specific skill associated with “effective communication”. The learner learns about tailoring their message to their audience, and is given the opportunity to practice the skill by editing their own write-up about their technical product. Later, the learner also evaluates someone else’s ability to tailor their message to an audience.

Hence, learners are able to achieve competency toward a complex skill like “communicating effectively” because the module breaks down aspects of the competency into a practicable component.

Source

Dr. Pam Grossman, the Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania champions the importance of “decomposition of practice”. This is when the instructor breaks down a complex practice into its constituent parts for the purposes of teaching and learning. Further, it relies on specifically “naming the component parts of a complex practice” (2020). Thus, once the component part has been identified and named, it “provides opportunities for the learner to “practice key components of the complex practice.”

This learning module accomplishes decomposition of practice by clearly breaking down the components of “effective presentation skills” into a clear and easy to understand acronym: V-LEG. Hence, a complex skill such as “presenting effectively” is made accessible with the decomposition of practice.

Source

In Make It Stick, cognitive scientists Roediger and McDaniel describe the dual processes of activating and elaborating upon prior knowledge.

“All new learning requires a foundation of prior knowledge. Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know” (5). Encoding new concepts into long-term memory instantly becomes stickier when the learner is able to connect new knowledge to existing information already in their long-term memory.

In this module, learners are prompted to first recall information they already know regarding presenting and communicating effectively prior to learning about the components of effective presentation and communication skills. Furthermore, the learners are not simply asked to “recall prior information”. Instead, they are placed in scenarios in which the information recall is made more urgent and emotional. Ultimately, this module prevents new information from being isolated as new and dry material and instead, connects it to knowledge the learner already possesses.

In Make It Stick, cognitive scientists Roediger and McDaniel describe the importance of reflection. “Reflection can involve several cognitive activities that lead to stronger learning: retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these to new experiences, and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time” (27). Clearly, reflection is a form of practice with myriad benefits.

In this module, the learner engages in self-reflection by ranking themselves on the components of effective presentation skills. They identify which skills they feel need the most work versus skills they feel need the least work. Personalized practice and reflection are important components to have in skill-based learning modules.