Creating
Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing
Evaluating
Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing
Analyzing
Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing
Applying
Carrying out or using a procedure through executing, or implementing; understanding/constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining
Understanding
Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining
Remembering
Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long-term memory
Web-Based University Courses and Bloom's Taxonomy
Because, as already discussed, Web-based courses tend to be learner centered, they require cognitive (thinking) activity at the higher levels identified in Bloom's taxonomy. In most courses, textbook materials, syllabus directions, and guidance from the instructor are made available to assist you in moving through the lower taxonomy levels of remembering and understanding. But, you have to make the effort to acquire the knowledge, remember it, and grasp for it until it is clearly understood.
"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
-Malcolm Forbes
In other words, in active learning of this kind, information and knowledge are not neatly packaged for you simply to memorize and restate in a test. Instead, you have to do some exploring, reading, grasping, and sorting out (thinking) to identify particular knowledge and hold on to it. Having made this individual effort-which requires time and concentration-you can reach the point of saying, "I see . . . I've got it!" That's when understanding occurs and you have a secure grasp of particular knowledge.
But there's more. The goal of most university-level courses is to lead you well beyond this point of gaining (understanding) new knowledge. Online university courses in particular require you to think more comprehensively and engage in cognitive activity represented by the upper four levels in Bloom's taxonomy. When you proceed to apply, analyze, and evaluate new knowledge, you find yourself dealing with a much larger framework in which you have to consider implications, choices, conclusions, principles, and values. You discover that it's necessary to interact with others, listen openly, and reflect on their perspectives as you integrate essential ideas into your personal holistic view of the course subject. At the end of this process, you begin creating something solid in your thinking, something solid enough to allow you to act, to be confident-even generate new, more complex cognitive structures related to the subject.