Last week we recapped the five levels and symbols of SOLO Taxonomy as a teaching and learning tool. We also looked at how to progress from the PRE-STRUCTURAL level, where we may not know much, to the UNI-STRUCTURAL level where we are beginning to know things.

PRE-STRUCTURAL= when a student first starts a new topic, they may know nothing, or have no skills.

UNI-STRUCTURAL= a student knows one thing or can perform one skill.

MULTI-STRUCTURAL= a student knows several things about their topic or can perform several disconnected skills.

RELATIONAL= a student starts to show awareness of the connections between pieces of knowledge or can perform a sequence of skills.

EXTENDED ABSTRACT= a student can see deeper connections or the implications of those relationships to understand it from a new perspective or can perform a sequence of skills under different conditions or adapt their technique.

THIS WEEK

Today, we will cover the MULTI-STRUCTURAL stage.

MULTI-STRUCTURAL

To move from the UNI-STRUCTURAL stage of learning we simply need to accumulate more knowledge or skills. Put bluntly, we need to know more stuff. The moment we acquire a sequence of knowledge or can perform several skills, we have advanced to the MULTI-STRUCTURAL stage. This means simply that I know MORE or can do MORE. The particular ACADEMIC VERBS that can help you identify if you are in this stage include being able to LIST, DESCRIBE, OUTLINE, and/or COMBINE pieces of knowledge or multiple parts of their skill, then they are most likely at the MULTI-STRUCTURAL stage. However, the next improvement is much more difficult and requires students to now do something with this newly acquired knowledge or skill set. That will be the focus for next week, moving to the RELATIONAL stage.