FIGURE 3.

Biggs’s SOLO as a framework for cognitive processes. Biggs’s SOLO describes five levels of complexity in terms of work completed by students. In the prestructural stage, student work tends to be so incomplete that they miss the purpose of the question. There is no Bloom’s taxonomy equivalent, as learning objectives should not call for students to miss the point of the question. Unistructural work draws a single connection between two ideas, which parallels the understand cognitive process, such as drawing a conclusion based on a direct cause-and-effect connection. Multistructural work demonstrates multiple unistructural connections but does not articulate the relationship among these connections. In our data set, we did not see a Bloom’s taxonomy equivalent, as assessment items calling for multistructural outcomes were likely coded as separate understand questions. The relational stage, which parallels the analyze cognitive process, not only demonstrates multiple connections but also how these connections are related to one another as part of a larger whole. The extended-abstract stage, which parallels the create cognitive process, goes beyond the relational stage by connecting the coherent structure to relevant outside information, often bringing in different perspectives and generating novel insights. Figure adapted from Biggs and Collis (1982).