Bloom's taxonomy: A framework for assessing programmers' knowledge of software systems

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Programmers must attain knowledge about a system before they can perform specific software maintenance tasks on it. Traditionally, computer scientists have described the activity of attaining this knowledge as 'software comprehension'. However, if we look at the educational literature, attainable knowledge has been described with much finer granularity. Bloom's (1956) taxonomy identifies six separate levels of knowledge within the cognitive domain, one of which refers to a (more constricted) definition of comprehension. Several other levels in Bloom's taxonomy seem to correlate more directly to specific software maintenance tasks. This article reviews Bloom's taxonomy as a richer descriptive framework for programmers' knowledge of code and illustrates how various software maintenance tasks map to knowledge levels in this hierarchy. A pilot study is presented showing how participants' knowledge of software may differ at various levels of this hierarchy.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - IWPC 2003
Subtitle of host publication11th IEEE International Workshop on Program Comprehension
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages165-174
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)0769518834
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2003
Event11th IEEE International Workshop on Program Comprehension, IWPC 2003 - Portland, United States
Duration: 10 May 200311 May 2003

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE Workshop on Program Comprehension
Volume2003-May
ISSN (Print)1092-8138

Conference

Conference11th IEEE International Workshop on Program Comprehension, IWPC 2003
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPortland
Period10/05/0311/05/03

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