When designing a course’s learning outcomes, it is important to understand the complexity of student tasks. For example, should students be able to compare two works of literature before they apply similar concepts to their own writing? Using a framework like Bloom’s helps determine the cognitive complexity of student tasks, whether there is variety of difficulty among learning outcomes and, if not, how to alter them to create variety.

Bloom’s Taxonomic Pyramid orders the levels of outcomes from the lowest order of cognition (remembering) to the highest (creating) (Krathwohl, 2002). In the following table we have given a brief description of what these levels mean, as well as example learning outcomes in a cooking class where students are learning to make omelettes.

There are a several important points to note about levels of complexity.

• Higher levels are often more complex
  While higher levels may be more difficult, this is not always the case. For example, the complexity or difficulty of a student creating a song may be low (e.g., sing any melody) or high (e.g., incorporate a full orchestra). 
• Levels build off each other
  In order to analyze content, students need to know and understand the parts or there is nothing to analyze. While levels often build off each other, students can be introduced to, and complete, levels at higher tasks earlier. For example, asking students to cook a souffle first, and then analyze what worked and what went wrong to better understand the chemistry of cooking uses several levels together.
• Variety of levels
  If all learning outcomes are at the same level, students will not develop well-rounded skills. An entry-level course may require students to mainly remember, understand and apply concepts, while a higher-level course might focus more on evaluation and creation.
• Scaffolding
  Beginning students can practice higher levels of complexity with appropriate scaffolding (see scaffolding). For example, when asking students to create a short story you might limit page length, number of characters, location etc.

To create a variety of appropriate learning outcomes for students:

1. Use this verb chart to categorize your learning outcomes by Bloom’s six levels.
2. Determine which levels are appropriate for your course and which are missing. Some will exist in multiple categories and complexity will depend on the focus of the learning outcome.
3. Adjust or create new outcomes using the verb chart by choosing new verbs in the appropriate categories. Are these balanced?