Bloom's taxonomy as a pedagogical model for signals and systems

Bloom's taxonomy (BT) is a hierarchical organisation of global educational objectives. Its cognitive domain has been used to improve pedagogy in several disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). At the same time, it has helped improve assessment methods in the domain of STEM. The work presented herein describes taxonomic levels specific to learning objectives in the electrical engineering course entitled 'Signals and Systems' (S&S). Corresponding to those taxonomic levels, the paper also presents test questions to assess the students at different levels of cognition. In order to validate the proposed taxonomy, the presented test paper is used for summative assessment of 981 students. Results of this assessment are found to agree with the assumed taxonomic levels of the test questions. The results of this test fit closely to the bell-curve distribution and are contrasted with the results from an older, stereotypical examination that was not BT-aware.