SOLO Taxonomy

The SOLO taxonomy stands for:

Structure of  Observed   Learning    Outcomes (SOLO)

The SOLO taxonomy is the model of learning that “ provides a simple and robust way of describing how learning out comes grow in complexity from surface to deep understanding”.

     It was developed by Biggs and Collis (1982), and is well described in Biggs and Tang (2007)

It describes level of increasing complexity in a student's understanding of a subject, through five stages, and it is claimed to be applicable to any subject area. Not all students get through all five stages, of course, and indeed not all teaching (and even less "training") is designed to take them all the way. SOLO learning taxonomy, helps students to use progressively more complex cognitive processes.

It is essentially a hierarchy which has 5 stages or levels that attempts to assess the students learning based on the quality of their work.

1 - Pre-structural:   It is the first stage. There students are simply acquiring bits of unconnected information, which have no organization and make no sense. The tasks are not given to the students appropriately. You can say it lower order.

2 – Uni- structural: Simple and obvious connections are made, but their significance is not grasped. The student's response only focuses on one relevant aspect of information. Here , simple connection are made between ideas.

3 – Multi-structural: Here more connections are created. You can say, a number of connections may be made, but the meta-connections between them are missed, as is their significance for the whole.

4 - Relational level of information: the student is now able to appreciate the significance of the parts in relation to the whole.

5 - Extended abstract level of information and knowledge:  At this stage of extended abstract , the student is making connections not only within the given subject area, but also beyond it, able to generalize and transfer the principles and ideas underlying the specific instance. The previous integrated information may  be conceptualized to a new field.