New Educational Objectives and Methodologies for the Information Age

Knowledge is power. The knowledge on theWeb expands the power of human minds. This paper presents a model of education for extending human minds with the knowledge on the Web. The proposed model is an updated version of the six levels of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy used to classify educational learning objectives. The new web-based model focuses on extending one’s mind with knowledge on the Web by modifying the first three levels: Access (mostly replace memory), Validate (including understand), Utilize (including apply). First, "Access" is the key to expand one’s memory to include information available on the Web. Second, "Validate" is needed to determine resources, the validity of the available information and to choose from numerous resources. Third, "Utilize" focuses on using tools and knowledge available on the Web to achieve one’s objectives. The higher three levels "Analyze", "Evaluate", and "Create” of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy remain unchanged. Experiments were conducted at the Medical Institute of RUDN University to test the proposed model. The experiments were aimed at testing the processes of Access, Validate, and Utilize for getting knowledge on theWeb to achieve educational objectives. The results of the experiments show that students can follow the processes independently to expand their knowledge with the use of knowledge on the Web. As the results of our new web-based model and experiments, it may be necessary and important to adapt our educational objectives and methodologies to meet the needs of our information age.