Beyond Bloom’s: Students’ Perception of Bloom’s Taxonomy and its Convolution with Cognitive Load

Bloom’s taxonomy is widely used in educational research to categorize the cognitive skills required to answer exam questions. For this study, we analyzed how students categorize exam questions (high-level question or low-level question,) gathered data as to their rationale for categorization, and compared their categorizations to those of experts. We found that students consistently rank high-level questions incorrectly. We analyzed student reasons for their categorizations, and found that for many of the incorrectly categorized questions the students referred to reasons related to Cognitive Load Theory. This shows that cognitive load prevents students from accurately assessing the cognitive level of an exam question. Thus, extra cognitive load in exam questions may prevent those questions from accurately measuring the skills and knowledge of the student. This points to the need for instructors to eliminate cognitive load from their exams.