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As millions of students across the world go back to school this month, 178 students from 49 countries will turn on their computers and step onto the virtual campus of the world's first global, tuition-free online university.

Discussions during the 1948 Convention of the American Psychological Association led Bloom to spearhead a group of educators who eventually undertook the ambitious task of classifying educational goals and objectives. Their intent was to develop a method of classification for thinking behaviors that were believed to be important in the processes of learning. Eventually, this framework became a taxonomy of three domains:

• The cognitive - knowledge based domain, consisting of six levels
  
• The affective - attitudinal based domain, consisting of five levels, and
  
• The psychomotor - skills based domain, consisting of six levels.
  

That event was one of my best learning experiences.  It reinforced the need to meet with learners and understand their world.  It also opened my eyes to think beyond the obvious.  A big pitfall is that we tend to rest in the familiar. Without the time on the floor, I would have built a functional course, but missed the opportunity to make real improvements on their performance.