Skip to Main Content

Academic skills for BU pre-arrivals

This guide is uses a selection of resources from our Academic Skills Hub to help future BU students begin their transition to BU.

Introduction

Critical thinking is the ability to understand connections between ideas. It is important for understanding and analysing information, not only in academic but also in daily life.

Watch BU students explain:

  • what critical thinking means to them
  • how they use evaluation techniques in their studies
  • where to get help when they need it

[2 minutes 9 seconds] 

Bloom's taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a system of classification that helps teachers teach and students learn.

[6 minutes 3 seconds]

Using Bloom's Taxonomy ensures that when teachers set assessments, they are assessing students - and students are producing work - at the right level.

As you progress in your degree, the marking criteria changes to incorporate higher level thinking skills. This means the expectations for you to think critically increase.

A revised version of Bloom's taxonomy is shown in the lightbulb below:

This image shows A Taxonomy for teaching learning and assessment and contains the following information. Produce new and original work - Create - Develop, investigate, design, construct, author, generate. Justify your points based on substantiated evidence - Evaluate - Argue, assess, defend, judge, predict, interpret, conclude, gauge, evaluate. Break down information into smaller parts and look and explore them - Analyse - Break down, categorise, compare and contrast, outline, relate, find evidence. Apply knowledge to situations - Apply - Apply, illustrate, interpret, discover, relate, employ, give examples, predict, practice, demonstrate, implement. Show an understanding of the subject - Understand - Describe, estimate, extend, identify, indicate, recognise, locate, summarise, translate, distinguish. Recall information you have previously gained - Remember - Memorise, recall, state, list, arrange, define, label, repeat, duplicate, select, arrange.

(Devis-Rozental amended from Anderson et al. 2001)

It helps to consider Bloom's Taxonomy when analysing the process / action words in your coursework briefs as they will help you understand what your lecturer is asking you to do.

Test your knowledge of process words below (we recommend a laptop or desktop for the following activity):

Download our process words lists below.

Critical thinking techniques

This Critical thinking techniques workshop:

  • discusses what critical thinking is
  • shows you how to evaluate your own critical thinking skills
  • outlines some of the main techniques
  • explores tools that you can use to evaluate sources and identify fake news

[9 minutes 55 seconds]

Critical thinking for writing

This Critical thinking for writing workshop considers how to apply critical thinking in academic writing.

[5 minutes 47 seconds]