Results tagged “Bloom” from PEDABLOGUE

Just file this one under "thought of the day."

"Writing is less a profession than a professing -- a way of stimulating, organizing and affirming thoughts to give meaning to some slice of life." -- William Safire

I culled this quote from the introduction to a book of quotations called Good Advice on Writing, edited by William Safire and Leonard Safir, (Simon and Schuster, 1992). At first I just liked the way Safire framed the act of writing as something akin to teaching, construing writers as professors, of a sort. But looking over it again, I think those functions he lists are precisely what defines the professorial role:

• stimulating


• organizing


• affirming


• interpreting ["giving meaning to"]

This list (perhaps incomplete) still functions as something of a "writing teacher's taxonomy." We stimulate students to think and act in the world -- a stimulus that produces a written response. We organize our curriculum and our syllabi content and our daily class periods, and we arm students with organizational strategies for their own ideas. We affirm what students do right in our comments and we reaffirm the wisdom of the textbooks and literature in our discussions and reinforcement of them. We interpret the world and its culture -- and by employing and modeling the methods of our discipline, or by having students interpret one another's work in peer groups, we help students develop these skills on their own.

The better writer you are, perhaps, the better teacher you can be. I see this all the time in our Writing Popular Fiction program, which on top of having a rock solid full time faculty base of PhDs who write fiction, also brings in professional writers as adjuncts to mentor novelists and teach courses in the craft. I see the transference of good writing to good teaching in the Freshman Comp courses taught by people who enjoy the craft and employ it as part of their career both in the English major and throughout the disciplines; and it is self-evident in the student tutors who work in our writing center, hired because of their strong writing skills. I see it in the writers who have taught me much in their non-fiction instructional books about the art and craft and methods of teaching, learning, writing, reading.

I have to thank Marc Sheffner for turning me on to Ed Nuhfer's excellent Nutshell Notes -- a collection of tips for teachers hosted at Idaho State U (earlier copies are also gathered in a big .pdf file by CU Denver, where it used to be published). It's a wonderful resource!

Since we're fast approaching the New Year, I thought I'd celebrate by pointing readers to Nuhfer's article "Toward a New Year: Strengthening Syllabi". It was written in 2003, but that doesn't mean it's out of date: the essay spoke to me because I, too, am revising my syllabi over the Winter Break as I prepare for the new term. The article is brief, but I liked the section where the teacher is encouraged to "Tell something about yourself [on the syllabus] because you will be the most important person in this course to each student." Simple truth, followed by good advice and what personal things to divulge.

As I browsed through the various issues of Nutshell Notes, I bookmarked another one that really made me sit up and rethink a few things. It was Nuhfer's "Levels of Thinking and Educational Outcomes" piece, which features a great table of Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Domains in relation to the taxonomy of others (even DeBono's six thinking "hats"). Bloom becomes very dogmatic in educational circles, so it was nice to see this consideration of alternative frameworks for student development. Nuhfer organizes the various tables on his chart by four areas of a learner's emphasis: content-intensive emphases, process-intensive emphasis, self-reflection, and judgment from experience. The latter is the one least addressed by Bloom's Taxonomy, which gave me pause. Nuhfer negotiates these differences in terms of William Perry's treatment of the stages of intellectual growth with an emphasis on Lee Knefelkamp's discussion on "personalism" -- all this is a part of a series of essays spurred by a teacher's workshop related to Nutshell Notes that focused on Perry's book, Forms of Ethical and Intellectual Development in the College Years. I'd like to read that book. I plan to think about my syllabi in relation to these issues, too, as I revise them. [I'm also updating Pedablogue's design a bit, particularly by adding tags to entries to ease navigation... if you have a recommended tag you'd like me to add, let me know in a comment.]

Happy New Year!

In "Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students" (Campus Technology, Oct 2008), Dr. Ruth Reynard talks about the mistakes she's made using weblogs with her grad students. It's a fantastic, enlightening essay, revealing how to not only avoid errors but how to utilize weblog technology well. In a nutshell, here are the problems Reynard outlines:

• Ineffective Contextualization


• Unclear Learning Outcomes


• Misuse of the environment


• Illusive grading practices


• Inadequate time allocation

Her section on "unclear learning outcomes" is significant, describing how such levels of Bloom's taxonomy as "synthesis" and "application" can shape blogging assignments.

I don't use blogs as a teaching tool nearly as much as my English colleague at SHU, Dennis Jerz, does (see our campus blog portal for a peek at all that he administers). But I do routinely ask my student authors in the Writing Popular Fiction graduate program to keep a blog as a reading journal. Reading Reynard's article, I feel that "illusive grading practices" may be something I still need to work on: often, I just append evaluative comments on a student's blog entries without giving much thought into the >kind< of entries I'm evaluating. Reynard recommends making a rubric that outlines various "statement types" that students can bring to their blogging, such as: "Reflection statements (self positioning within the course concepts); Commentary statements (effective use of the course content in discussion and analysis); New idea statements (synthesis of ideas to a higher level); and Application statements (direct use of the new ideas in a real life setting)." I may borrow from this idea and design a handout for students that asks them to approach their journal entries -- which essentially are reading responses -- as different "types" of statements -- possibly asking them to do one of each. Another good idea, naturally, is to request students to tag entries along these lines, as warranted.

I also like Dennis Jerz' structured RRRR sequence -- a method for routinizing student blogging assignments in his Writing for the Internet course. It encourages students to interact with each other and class alike, and functions to support his challenging "Just in Time" teaching method.

In one of my classes this morning, I caught one student repeatedly turning to another and talking. I couldn't tell what they were talking about -- the weekend? the weather? or was it related to my discussion point? -- but I interrupted anyway, as I usually do, to remind the student that if they're going to speak, they should speak to the whole class.

It turned out she was answering questions that the woman beside her had asked about some terminology I was using.

I thanked her for helping, but suggested that the student could have just as easily raised her hand and asked me to clarify.

I notice this sort of sideline commentary behavior a lot. Not because I'm using strange jargon, but -- I'd speculate -- because college students often are either "too polite" to interrupt the lecture, or "too embarrassed" to expose their lack of understanding to their classmates. But what they don't realize is that there's a degree to which such sideline comments not only interrupt the focus of the conversation with distracting sounds (people turn to see what they're talking about, etc.), but that it also takes TWO students away from the focus rather than just one. I'm pretty hard-headed about this -- if I'm pursuing an idea, I want to make sure that everyone stays with me, and I also want to make sure that everyone understands it. Sometimes one student might misinform the other.

But there is something else lurking behind today's event. Our class has had a series of open class discussions -- several, in fact, led by student presentations -- so the students in question may not have realized that I thought I was lecturing. There was a shift in mode from student-centered to teacher-centered delivery that I assumed was obvious, but it wasn't as self-evident as I'd assumed. I neglected to "signpost" that I was going to take center stage.

I've been reflecting on my approach to the lecture and the ways in which I try to retain focus on the ideas while at the same time keeping the conversation open for dialogue, dissent, exploration and other forms of interactive discourse with the students. My lecturing style is very porous; I expect interruptions and sideline discussions. And I will ask questions that aren't only hypotheticals, but also solicit answers to them. And I will always try to get students to argue with me or test examples that I toss out -- often playing devil's advocate -- primarily in order to catalyze active learning and critical thinking rather than the rote taking of notes.

This often takes a lot of energy and concentration. In his weblog, my colleague Dennis Jerz speculates about the relative energy it takes to lecture about literature (versus leading a discussion of a text)...a lesson culled from an experience of teaching a class while feeling under the weather. His contention is that it requires less energy to lecture than to facilitate a discussion -- and this puzzled me, because I didn't see how they were really so different. An hour's worth of teaching is an hour's worth of teaching, no? But then I realized what he was raising an inquiry into the performative activity of the teacher and the amount of energy it takes to pull off a successful performance. One way to think of the lecture, in conventional terms, is that lecturing is to running discussion as monologue is to dialogue. Jerz's revelation is that dialogue can be tougher than monologue, even though the "weight" of the conversation is ostensibly evenly distributed in a discussion. Monologues can be prepared and don't require much "off the cuff" processing even if the onus of the communication is on the teacher, whereas a dialogue requires spontaneity, impassioned interest, quick thinking on the feet, and a vim for interpersonal exchange.

Understandably, when a teacher is ill, as Jerz was, it's hard to drum up that vim. Personally, if I'm really ill, I'll quickly move some of the "work" into group tasks to give myself a little recuperative break. The students usually are understanding in this regard.

But I'm still trying to figure out if I, personally, would feel any difference in the energy required to run a discussion as opposed to a lecture. I tend to approach virtually all of my lectures as a form of dialogue to begin with, even when addressing a large crowd in a formal setting. Perhaps this is because I teach English courses, where interpretation of a text is usually open to dispute, and where I solicit multiple viewpoints in order to enhance collaborative learning. Or maybe I do this because I fear boring an audience. But if pushed to define the difference in my own methods, I would probably say that I define a discussion as student-centered process of discovery from the bottom-up, whereas a lecture is a content-centered discussion of material the teacher delivers from the top-down. From my view, neither is a monologue. What I'm saying is that, pedagogically, both are interactive processes, with different levels of "call and response" activity and numerous dialogic demands that attempt to reach people with different learning intelligences (such as visual, auditory, etc.). So even when I prepare what might amount to a "speech" to present to the class, I think of my lectures as open discussions to some degree. If they're not, I see students eyes get droopy, and it troubles me. So I try to keep them on their toes. I may be authoritative, but I will often declaim being the sole authority, citing not only the sources I'm drawing on but also student work from the past or student comments in the now.

Let's call this approach the "permeable lecture": one that is pre-organized to cover certain information that the teacher knows is essential to deliver, but which is at the same time open to interruption, dialogue, debate, questions, and micro-conversations. Order that makes room for chaos. The teacher is still center-stage, but the students are solicited to participate as fully as possible; it is not only the expectation that they remain attentive listeners, but that they also genuinely prove it. I suspect all teachers are open to interactive discussion, but I bet such interactivity is usually reserved for Q&A time after the lecture is over. However, there's always a degree to which lecturing can be receptive to discussion during its delivery, and it can even foment a collaborative process of "working" the ideas together in a decentered way.

Although the techniques that follow are probably nothing new to you, here are some strategies I personally use to try to keep my lectures permeable (if possible -- granted, not all content should be open to dispute or philosophical musing, but it's preferable to groom interest in the audience, rather than ignore disinterest). The trick to the "permeable" lecture is to keep the potential for chaos, diversions, and other interruptions at a minimum, while still keeping the conversation "on task":

• I'll put an outline of my lecture on the board, usually before class begins, and leave it there for the entire hour. This keeps us all on track. Maybe just three bullet points is enough. Students will usually write these down, and then fill in notes during the discussion. I might model this by also taking notes and putting the key words or concepts that I would expect them to know (for, say, a test) on the board, as well. If we don't get to the latter points on the board, this is a visible reminder that the lecture isn't over yet, and we'll get to it next time. Or I'll think on my feet and generate an assignment about those points for homework.
  
• Alternatively, I'll prepare an overhead that uses questions rather than "talking points" and ask audience to answer the questions. This method generates lots of interest. Then, after the answers have been exhausted, I'll reveal parts of the overhead that I've covered up which have my prepared answers on them. If there are any subpoints that haven't been addressed yet, I'll give a mini-lecture on those. Having the overhead shows that my lecture is prepared, but also open to student contributions to the issues that the questions raise. Sometimes I'll write their answers on the overhead alongside my own. [Alternatively, I've used handouts of outlines with very large blank spaces or columns to invite students to put their notes in the margins or fill out the form as I lecture.]
  
• I will physically point at the bullet points on the board and use "tugging" hand gestures to remind students to draw the connections between their points and mine. The idea is to keep coming back to the lecture, keep on track, allow the rest of the class to keep focused on the issue at hand.
  
• I try to remember to ask for questions routinely after each main idea that I have to communicate, not just at the end of the hour. But I also will pause midway through a "talking point" to raise my own questions. This approach does not just espouse the Socratic method. I'll actually call on students who might seem to be drifting off and see what they think about what I'm saying, as I'm saying it. If they've been daydreaming, I'll even give them the chance to recalibrate their attentiveness by restating a point I've just made, but I still demand that they answer the question. I want them to test my ideas, to think of them as claims or hypotheses rather than simply authoritative truth passed down from the oracle. The burden of teaching is on me, but the burden of learning is always on them.
  
• Naturally, knowing you could be called on at any time to answer a question can keep you attentive. But some students get caught off guard or, otherwise, genuinely aren't sure how to respond. My students are perfectly free to say "I don't know," and I'll assume that I haven't worded my question well, so I'll rephrase it and give them a second chance. Or I'll ask if others do know and wait for the hands to pop up.
  
• If someone blurts out something highly irrelevant, I either ignore it, laugh it aside (if it's a wisecrack), or, in a humorous way, actually say "irrelevant!" using a faux European accent. If it's a joke that tries to disrupt the class, I might start asking that student hard questions, maybe even work with the material of the joke itself, if I can directly push the student to connect it to the content of my lecture.
  
• I will use student names in hypothetical examples or imaginary test cases. ("Let's say Charlie is on a dinner date with Jane...... is it sexist for Charlie to pay the check without asking if she'd like to split it?"). I'll also often use second person plural to discuss topics, while making direct eye contact with student after student. ("When you pay for the check, what are you communicating about gender relations? When you let the other person pay, what are you assenting to, passively?"). Then I'll pause. Sometimes students will think I've asked a direct question rather than a hypothetical. That's okay. That means they're actually playing out the line of thought. If they answer the hypothetical example in a "real" way, I'll work with them on their turns, but get back to the point at hand as soon as I'm able.
  
• If students raise their hands while I'm speaking, I will call on them. If I have to get through my point and can't sacrifice the time to enter into dialogue, I will either ask them to "hold that thought" for later, or give a subtle, "I see you but we don't have time for it," non-verbal gesture (perhaps a subtle head shake or a hand signal that signs "put it down"). When I finish my point, I'll ask "Did that answer your question, Horatio?"
  
• I pay attention to student habits in my classroom. If a student has always been argumentative about every point raised in previous discussions, or if their comments are often superficial or ego-centric, I will be less likely to invite his or her comments during a lecture; if a student rarely volunteers a conversation point but they want to do so during lecture, I'll leap at the chance to get them to participate.
  
• In a class that is usually discussion oriented and highly student-centered, students sometimes are slow to recognize that I'm lecturing, not facilitating open conversation. So I use subtle non-verbal claims for "the floor" when lecturing, so that students know that this isn't a WIDE open discussion. I might dress more formally, use the podium more stiffly, adopt all the cues of the presentational mode of speech delivery. Sometimes I'll use direct "recentering" language like "listen up" or "okay, let's begin."
  

These techniques don't always come into play at once. The circumstance determines the approach. But I do try to keep the class student-oriented, even when it is teacher-centered. Although some lectures demand less permeability than others, I often prefer the open lecture style to the closed lecture style -- because the more invested I am in my listener's attentiveness, the more they're invested in the topic at hand. Plus it gives me a way to gauge their level of knowledge about the topic at hand and adjust to take it up or down a notch, or, for instance, to apply a different element of Bloom's taxonomy to the matter at hand.

In my research for a presentation on "Teaching with Film" this week, I came across Richard H. Dery's excellent article, "Digital Gumbo" (available at the thoughtful and often humorous webzine for teachers, Faculty Shack). In it, Dery talks about his design of an online tutorial in literary "character" that utilizes Bloom's taxonomy in what I would call a "model" way. (And I'm not just saying that because it uses a clip from Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear, which I have written about and taught often.)

Take a look at one of the course objectives from my syllabus for Literary Criticism (a 300-level course in theory and analysis):

"To become comfortable reading academic criticism and applying critical methods in your writing"

Seems like a good objective, no? At a recent faculty workshop on Bloom's taxonomy, I discovered that this seemingly innocent -- and to me, important -- objective may be more problematic than I realized. And by revising this objective I've come up with some strategies for strengthening my course.

I think most teachers would agree that reducing student anxiety about a course's content is a prime objective, because anxiety and fear can impede learning. Everyone knows that motivation plays a role in student learning. And what teacher of English doesn't harbor some desire to inculcate students with some awareness and appreciation of the "pleasure of the text"? But the problem my objective raises is quite simple. How does one objectively evaluate whether or not a student has become more "comfortable"? Is comfort-level really a measurable skill? Without utilizing biofeedback technology, it's probably difficult to assess (let alone grade) in an objective manner.

When I teach lit crit, I always encounter a latent fear and anxiety among students about the level of discourse encountered in literary theory. The reactions to the writing of critics like Jacques Derrida range from jaw-dropping bafflement to outrageous hostility. Literary criticism can read like a foreign language to a college student. The attitudes one develops early in relation to criticism can become a sort of baggage one carries throughout their academic life -- and many advanced learners carry chips on their shoulders (or, alternatively, a defensive arrogance) in regards to theory. So one of my missions in teaching the class is to encourage students to bracket off their emotional responses to (and alienation from) the Otherness of writing and to "run with it" even if they don't completely understand what a critical text is saying. It takes several reads and much learning to comprehend a difficult piece of theory, and I dare say only a fool would pretend to entirely understand what the critic means in some cases. Indeed, since theory is often philosophically abstract, the complicated syntax and the poetics of the writing are often required to encapsulate a thought, and it often approaches creative writing -- and therefore it requires a great deal of interpretive flexibility on the part of the reader.

Beyond the matter of "difficulty," I also try to encourage students to become comfortable forwarding their ideas and making risky interpretive moves that will advance their theoretical arguments beyond basic (and often "vulgar" -- meaning common and oversimplified, not grotesque) socio-historical interpretations. Undergraduate students who are finally "coming of age" as English majors aren't entirely comfortable having the legs they have recently mastered pulled out from under them. But too often they rely on habitual forms of interpretation that have worked in their other classes. When pressed to try something new, students will too often "consult the oracle" in their research and parrot the arguments of others, sometimes avoiding the advancement of authentic or original claims in the process. Trying to raise a student's comfort level with literary discourse invites them to participate more effectively in that discourse as an active critic, and to learn more about the value of alternative approaches to literature.

There are even more reasons why I would list "becoming comfortable" as a course objective, but the problem is assessment. It is nearly impossible to judge whether a student has met such an outcome using Bloom's cognitive taxonomy (although the objective on my syllabus does indeed use the term "applying," the phrase "to become comfortable" is the operative phrase).

The leader of our syllabus workshop suggested that I look into the "affective domain" of Bloom's Taxonomy, rather than the cognitive domain. He later turned me on to a very useful document that gives an overview of them, and I've begun looking into this material more deeply. The "Affective" taxonomy examines a student's growth in feelings or emotional areas -- it is an attitudinal form of assessment. Looking over the affective domain, I believe my objective ("to become comfortable") is most in line with this category:

Responding to Phenomena: Active participation on the part of the learners. Attends and reacts to a particular phenomenon. Learning outcomes may emphasize compliance in responding, willingness to respond, or satisfaction in responding (motivation).

Examples: Participates in class discussions. Gives a presentation. Questions new ideals, concepts, models, etc. in order to fully understand them. Know the safety rules and practices them.

Key Words: answers, assists, aids, complies, conforms, discusses, greets, helps, labels, performs, practices, presents, reads, recites, reports, selects, tells, writes.

And indeed, all of those examples and keywords are methods I employ in Literary Criticism to raise the students' comfort with the texts. Students not only write and participate in discussions, but even read a difficult essay outside of class and give a presentation to class about it. I am trying to raise the students' "willingness to respond" to criticism by asking them to respond with their own advanced critical thinking.

Here's how I might revise my objective:
FROM: "To become comfortable reading academic criticism and applying critical methods in your writing"
TO: "To apply critical methodology in response to criticism, through writing, presentation, and discussion."

Although that revision robs the objective of my drive to reduce student anxiety and increase comfort, it is easier for me to assess their application of criticism, than it is to determine their feelings about it. But as a creative writing instructor, I suspect that I am particularly attentive to student affects and attitudes and have some skill in helping students express themselves. I might consider mobilizing some of the techniques I apply in the creative writing classroom in the literary criticism classroom. This might enable students to move toward a higher level on the "affective" skill taxonomy, such as "integrating and organizing values" in relation to schools of critical thought. One technique I might adopt in the class is to ask students to keep a journal that invites them to share their feelings, gut reactions, and personal investment in the theories we are discussing, so that they might better integrate them into their own value system and career plans. Or I might ask them to express the attitudes inherent to (or, alternatively their own attitudes about) a particular school of thought through their own poetry, for example. In the past, I've assigned a paper that allows the student to write about their own "experience of feminism" and perhaps I can get them to do more personal writing in addition to the critical writing they perform.

I've only scratched the surface of this topic, but I've found a few useful essays on assessing the affective domain. Yeap Lay Leng's piece on "Learner Analysis in Instructional Design: The Affective Domain" offers an overview of ways in which affect is "taught and caught". Mary Miller's article, "Learning and Teaching in the Affective Domain" addresses how pervasive attitudinal assessment is in education, and offers good strategies for teaching in the affective domain.

In my entry "Remembering the Objective of Learning Objectives" two years ago, I wrote about Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and how it gives teachers a great way to think about course design -- from syllabus construction to assignments. This term, our campus is hosting "Teaching and Learning Forums" which will specifically focus on Bloom's taxonomy. A group of instructors at SHU will be workshopping their syllabi with it in mind, led by Dr. Terrance DePasquale. We've only just begun these forums, but I'm confident that doing this with colleagues will be a great way to reflect on and retool my/our courses.

In fact, I've become something of a taxonomic terror this past week: my Freshman Composition course is writing their first major essays on issues in Education, and -- thanks to the suggestion of my colleague Laura Patterson (who is expertly steering our campus toward a Writing Across the Curriculum model) -- I actually used the taxonomy itself as a focal point for class discussion. I put the cognitive processes (knowledge, comprehension, analysis, etc.) on the board and asked students to tell me what they thought these words meant -- and whether they thought they were equally good at all of them. The students got very interested in this, once they started sharing stories about their high school experiences and the majority agreed that most classes never go much deeper than teaching "knowledge."

Then I asked them if the taxonomy was a hierarchy -- with "knowledge" at the bottom and "evaluation" at the top -- or if they were all equally important. One student interestingly posited that "knowledge" is like the hub of a wheel, with spokes leading to all the other cognitive skills. Another suggested that people who don't know very much are still often good at "evaluation" from their gut instincts.

The discussion of "evaluation" was most productive. Out of the blue, I suggested we evaluate something we all know a thing or two about, like "chicken strips." The class laughed at this idea, but then I pointed to one student and said: "Seriously, what do you like about a chicken strip?" She shrugged and replied, "I dunno...I like them crunchy, I guess." Immediately everyone started spitting out things they liked or hated about them: greasiness, dipping sauces, batter, meatiness, etc. I transcribed all these on the board. Then we set to wittling the list down to isolate the most important "criteria" for evaluation. I think I was successful at getting across the idea that there's a difference between a snap value judgment and true evaluation, which requires a set of socially agreed-upon criteria.

Then I opened up the proverbial can of worms: "So how do your teachers evaluate you? How should I grade your writing?"

That, as the cliche goes, is the question.

It circled right back to Bloom's taxonomy...and some grading criteria I listed on the syllabus distributed on the first day of class. I think my attempt at making students conscious of the assumptions of the teaching situation was a productive and positive move. And I hope they'll continue to think about these issues as they become more reflexive thinkers.

The problem with taxonomies, obviously, is that they become monolithic abstractions that can lose their meanings entirely, reduced to meaningless buzzwords. Bloom's taxonomy is wonderful, but I still think I prefer Lorin Anderson's revision of Bloom's taxonomy, which changes some of Bloom's terms from nouns to verbs (e.g. "knowledge" is "remembering"; "comprehension" is "understanding"). Perhaps I'll bring this up with the class later on. The point I want them to recognize is that not only does evaluation require social justification, but also that the criteria shift and change as social groups evolve.

Although every college should have a mission, and every class a series of desired outcomes, I sometimes feel that the way learning objectives are utilized can stultify a course: sometimes they lead to boggy syllabi (or other documents) brimming with academic jargon; at others, they dogmatically drive a course's direction and ultimately imply that when the class is over, the objectives have been actualized and "done with," rather than part of an on-going process of development. Outcomes should be measurable and quantifiable, but I'm not convinced they can be measured with accuracy by anyone other than the students themselves (ergo, the use of teaching evaluations).

But I forget that at root, objectives are a hueristic for educational design, which can be traced back to (among other things) Benjamin Bloom's classic taxonomy of educational objectives. Gunter Krumme provides a wonderful overview of Bloom's taxonomy along with a compilation of online sources in regards to it. KSU offers good guidelines for writing learning outcomes based on Bloom. Another article from Lee Shuhlman at the Carnegie Foundation outlines the institutional history of Bloom's taxonomy, while developing a new "table for learning." And Lorin Anderson (et. al) developed a new revision of Bloom's Taxonomy which has made a large impact on how teachers design course objectives.

Although the pressure to design a course with measurable outcomes can seem like a cold mechanism for measuring teaching performance and student learning, the objective of objectives should not be to bureaucratically satisfy an institution's administration or assuage the needs of an outside evaluator. So long as the student's learning remains at the center, objectives can do what they're meant to: send a student into a learning trajectory that may or may not end up where the syllabi suggests.