Educators continually want to explore new and innovative ways to improve student learning experiences, and recently, we’ve seen a surge in the popularity of the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) framework.

Depth of Knowledge (DOK) is an educational concept of standards to measure college and career readiness.

However, working with the DOK framework can be quite a complex task, and educators often have questions about its purpose, how students can best benefit from it, and how to implement the concept.

DOK was introduced by Dr. Norman Webb in 1997. He designed this model to increase the cognitive aspects and demands in standardized assessments.

Traditional standardized tests measured students’ ability in academic concepts, ideas, concepts, and procedures, but they only limitedly measured their ability to use or communicate their knowledge in different contexts.

Basically, Dr. Webb’s Depth of Knowledge measures to what extent students are able to explain results, answers, outcomes, or solutions and how extensively they can transfer and use the knowledge they gained in schools and real-world situations.

DOK involves categorizing assignments and tasks based on their cognitive requirements. The concept of DOK is a tool that allows teachers to better understand what their students are capable of at a particular phase. DOK helps educators create better learning experiences for their students.

The Four Levels of Depth of Knowledge

Dr. Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) is an educational framework that categorizes assignments and tasks based on the levels of cognitive effort required to complete them. DOK is very useful for standardized assessments and tests that measure various levels of academic rigor.

Webb’s Depth of Knowledge has four levels, each building on the previous one and being cognitively more complex. Dr. Webb’s four DOK levels are:

• DOK-1: Knowledge Acquisition. At level 1, students acquire the information required to develop deeper thinking and knowledge. Here, they are asked factual questions on topics and texts (who, what, when, where).
• DOK-2: Knowledge Application. At level 2, students learn and are assessed on how to communicate and demonstrate procedural and conceptual knowledge. They answer analytical questions challenging them to examine or explain how to use cognitive skills and academic concepts to answer questions, accomplish assignments, address problems, and analyze topics and texts.
• DOK-3: Knowledge Assessment. At level 3, the instruction and assessment focus shifts from application to analysis and evaluation. This is about how and why ideas, concepts, procedures, and operations can be used to reach and explain solutions and answers.
• DOK-4: Knowledge Augmentation. At level 4, students will be stimulated to think more critically about the influence, impact, and implications information and ideas have on a larger scale. Students are encouraged to think about other ways to gain knowledge, what else could be done, and how they could use the things they have learned in various academic or real-world settings.

What does Depth of Knowledge mean?

Depth of knowledge (DOK) is an educational concept used to measure the cognitive complexity level students are required to have to complete specific tasks.

While the DOK Wheel is a much-used tool in education, it is not the same as what we mean by Depth of Knowledge. The DOK Wheel is merely a display of different cognitive tasks and resource demands, allowing instructors to more readily determine which DOK level is required for any activity.‍

The DOK framework is helping teachers increase rigor in their classroom instruction. ‍When educators understand the four DOK levels of rigor, they can better design activities and create assessments that will support their students in developing increasingly sophisticated and complex thinking skills.

Common Core Standards

In 1997, Dr. Webb published Depth of Knowledge (DOK), which included four assessment levels. Since then, we have heard much about this educational concept while all states have tried to establish their own college and career-readiness standards.

Over the past decades, we heard a lot about states implementing the “Common Core Education Standards” or establishing their “Next Generation Science Standards,” to give you a few examples.

Dr. Webb’s DOK has been extensively used in the development of the American  Common Core Education Standards to determine the required level of cognitive demand and skill at each standard.

The Common Core State Standards aim to ensure a well-balanced level of cognitive demands and requirements across all grade levels.

DOK Wheel

The best-known element of Dr. Webb’s Depth of Knowledge is probably the DOK Wheel. Many students received a copy of the DOK Wheel during President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program, under which states were encouraged to transition to the Common Core State Standards.

Many educators and school administrators received copies of this graphic as an instructional tool or as a poster explaining how to use it and deliver lessons that promote cognitive depth and rigor.

The DOK Wheel is a useful and effective tool for higher-order thinking and teaching. It categorizes the various levels of thinking that students should be able to demonstrate.

Dr. Norman Webb is a senior research scientist emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Center for Educational Research.