A new bloom – adding ‘collaborate’ to Bloom’s taxonomy

There are a number of opportunities for collaboration, within and between universities, locally, internationally, with industry and with other education providers. University graduates are likely to be placed in a work environment where collaboration is required. Collaboration within higher education institutions has been shown to enhance student learning, and collaborative learning to improve student outcomes. A proposal has been made to add ‘collaborate’ to Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives, to emphasise the importance of collaboration and to encourage its inclusion in the educational process and assessment. Collaborate is sited between ‘apply’ and ‘analyse’ in the revised Bloom’s taxonomy hierarchy, and the new version named the New Bloom. This opinion piece expands on the concept and adds the specific objective of ‘work or share with others’ with keywords ‘share, cooperate, reciprocate, achieve consensus’. It also offers a non-hierarchical representation of the taxonomy, with collaborate as an important feature of each of the other components. Adding collaborate to Bloom’s taxonomy is recommended to emphasise the importance of collaboration and its contribution to each of the other components of the taxonomy.