Relationship between examination questions and bloom´s taxonomy

Written examination is a conventional yet universal tool to evaluate the student´s performance in a subject area, where the required cognitive ability is defined through items such as learning outcomes. Whether or not the written examination is able to assess the student´s ability very much depends on the questions presented in the examination paper. A good and reasonable examination paper must consist of various difficulty levels to accommodate the different capabilities of students. In this work, the difficulty level of each question in the examination paper is determined from the criteria of keyword/s found in the question. Further, the paper presents the cross-analysis across student performance, cognitive skill requirements, and module learning outcomes. The paper provides conclusions on the current relationship between examination questions, learning outcomes and student performance, as well as providing some indication of the relative changes required to move toward a more appropriate association and hence improve an assessment strategy.