2B: Types of Learning

To start translating your "Big Picture Goals" into specific learning outcomes, it can be useful to think about different types of learning. Here are 6 types of learning that might happen in your course:

• Factual Learning = Learning What, facts and principles
• Conceptual Learning = Learning What, concepts and theories
• Procedural Learning = Learning How, skills and procedures
• Conditional Learning = Learning When and Where, applications
• Metacognitive Learning = Learning How to Learn, direct and manage one’s own learning
• Reflective Learning = Learning Why, developing self-knowledge, cultural awareness, ethics, etc.

Of course, these ‘big picture’ kinds of outcomes are often the culmination of many specific things we do in our course but it can be helpful to start with the big picture so we can then think consciously about how all those specific things add up and contribute to that culminating idea.

Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain

The first few types of learning in the list above may be familiar to those who have seen Bloom's Taxonomy Links to an external site. before. This is one framework for thinking about different levels of cognitive development and can be very useful for helping us think about the different cognitive skills we want our students to develop. There is often a tendency for instructors to focus on content and that results in classes that focus mostly on the lower levels, but often, what we REALLY want is for our students to reach these higher levels. Bloom’s hierarchy reminds us to think about how we are helping students to get to those higher levels (see the linked page from Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching Links to an external site. for greater detail about Bloom's taxonomy):

 

Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning

One downside to the common form of Bloom’s is that it ONLY focuses on the cognitive domain and yet usually, at least some of what we want students to learn in college is more about what’s generally referred to as the AFFECTIVE domain, the arena of emotions, attitudes and social interaction. Dee Fink, in his work on Designing Courses for Significant Learning Links to an external site. proposes a taxonomy that explicitly recognizes these other areas (note: Bloom actually developed taxonomies for the Affective and Psychomotor domains Download Affective and Psychomotor domains

as well). Fink also emphasizes that these are interactive, not hierarchical like Bloom’s: