Bloom’s Taxonomy and Online Learning: The COVID-19 Scenario in Indian Perspective

With the advent of modernization and urbanization, the world has undergone some rapid changes. There have been some major transformations in the lifestyles of people and these transformations have reformed the education system as well. While previous education simply focused on imparting information, the present-day education system emphasizes on building the creative and analytical skills of the students. This shift in the purpose of education is believed to be quite beneficial in helping students develop the life skills required to cope effectively with the modern world. Organizations, today, prefer to recruit employees who possess good problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills and can suggest innovative ideas. In order to meet such requirements, the education system requires drastic restructuring. The Indian education system, for a long time, focused only on the memorization skills of the students but experts in the field of education, have started to recognize the limitations of this trend. They have realized that the need of the hour is not simply the retention of facts but learning how to apply them as well. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought some major modifications to the education system in India. During the pandemic, online learning replaced face-to-face learning. As interaction in online classes posed to be a challenge, teachers and other educationalists came up with new techniques to increase the engagement and interaction in students. Instead of simply giving lectures and dictating notes in class, teachers adopted a more interesting mode of teaching. Brainstorming sessions, presentations, discussions, etc. were frequently conducted which helped students to develop higher-order thinking skills. This shifted the focus of education from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered approach. Using the Bloom’s taxonomy as a guide, many reformations were brought to the Indian education system which have been discussed in this paper.