Computing Verbs to Enhance Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

Abstract

This lightning talk describes an in-progress project led by the ACM CCECC (Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges) to enhance the Bloom's Revised Taxonomy verb list with verbs that focus on computing competencies. Many colleges and universities, as well as organization-led curriculum projects (such as those of the ACM CCECC), use Bloom's Revised Taxonomy with its six levels of cognition to represent the level of cognitive depth a student is expected to achieve for a given competency or learning outcome. There are verb lists that associate verbs with each of the cognitive levels. For example, the verb "define" is associated with the lowest level, Remembering; the verb "develop" is associated with the highest level, Creating. Standard verb lists do not include verbs specific to computing disciplines, which can make it challenging to craft computing-centric learning outcomes. This project is an effort to enhance the standard verb lists with verbs that focus on computing competencies, such as "configure" at the Applying level and "trace" at the Analyzing level. An initial list of about 90 possible new verbs was presented to various computing communities for feedback, including via a poster at SIGCSE 2020. The list has been refined by the project team, and we are seeking another round of community input.