Bloom's taxonomy provides us with a vocabulary to describe the balanced range of thinking a student should undergo to develop a strong understanding of any material. Unfortunately, common approaches to both formative and summative assessments often leave our students thinking in the lower-order cognitive domain---assessments that require higher-order thinking are notoriously difficult to scale to large class sizes. In this paper, we focus on elevating the cognitive domain of student formative assessments in the context of a first-term computer science course (Applied Science 160) flipped-classroom at the University of British Columbia. We propose the integration of web-based tools with the current set of pre-lecture screencasts to take students to higher-orders of thinking before they reach lecture, and allow more time in lecture for exercises that require students to synthesize what they have learned. We assess potential costs and benefits of this approach in terms of formative assessments and the ability to accelerate to synthesis during a typical 70-minute lecture period.
['Celina Berg']
From buds to Bloom's: A proposal for growing strong students