Blooms Taxonomy Alignment Tool for Higher Education
Higher education course design requires learning objectives and assessments that operate primarily at the analyze, evaluate, and create levels, yet many university courses still rely heavily on lecture-and-recall formats that only reach the bottom two levels. The Blooms Taxonomy Alignment Tool helps faculty check course objectives, instructional activities, and assessments for a coherent cognitive progression, useful when preparing for accreditation reviewers.
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Accreditation-ready
How college and university faculty use the Blooms alignment tool
Scenarios showing how the sheet can help with cognitive balance in lessons.
Course syllabus and learning objective alignment
A business school professor named Dr. Okonkwo used the tool to audit her MBA marketing course. The tool found that all five course learning objectives were written at the understand level ('students will describe,' 'students will identify'). It suggested rewrites using evaluate and create verbs that better represented the actual demands of her case study assessments.
Assessment design for accreditation evidence
Accreditation bodies like SACSCOC, HLC, and AACSB require evidence that assessments measure the intended learning outcomes at appropriate cognitive levels. Use the sheet to check assessment designs (exams, papers, projects, and presentations) against stated learning objectives, and copy what you find into accreditation self-study documentation.
Online course cognitive balance
An instructional designer at a state university used the tool to audit an online gen-ed history course before launch. The tool found 8 of 12 modules were entirely at the remember and understand levels, a pattern common in online courses designed around video lecture and multiple-choice quizzes. It suggested discussion board prompts and short-answer assessments that push modules to the analyze and evaluate levels.
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Questions teachers ask
How does Blooms Taxonomy apply to graduate-level courses?
Graduate courses should operate almost entirely at the analyze, evaluate, and create levels. The remember and understand levels are appropriate only for introducing new frameworks or disciplinary vocabulary at the start of a course. Use the Higher education level, and treat any activity below the analyze level as a potential concern.
Can the tool generate accreditation-ready documentation?
Yes. The tool gives a sheet where you can note each course learning objective, the Blooms level it targets, the assessed activities at that level, and any unaddressed levels. You can copy this into the curriculum mapping for your accreditation body, including SACSCOC, HLC, NECHE, MSCHE, and WSCUC.
Does the tool support backwards design course planning?
Yes. There is no backwards design mode, but you can start with your intended learning outcomes and use the sheet to check assessments and activities at the appropriate cognitive levels. This helps align what you want students to achieve (outcomes) and what you assess (evidence), a core principle of accreditation standards like Quality Matters.
How does the tool handle the Blooms taxonomy for professional programs like law, medicine, and engineering?
Professional programs often use domain-specific competency frameworks rather than Blooms directly, but Blooms maps onto these frameworks well. The tool includes no mappings for ABET (engineering), LCME (medical education), or ABA (law) competency frameworks, so faculty map Blooms language to their program-specific accreditation requirements themselves.
Can I use the tool to evaluate student-generated content?
Yes. The tool is built for lessons and assessments, not student work, but you can use the level descriptions to judge what cognitive level a piece of work reaches compared to what the assignment intended. This is valuable for identifying whether students are engaging with the course at the intended level or defaulting to lower-order responses.
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