Transparent teaching methods help students understand how and why they are learning course content in particular ways. This list of options is adapted frequently as faculty participants identify further ways to provide explicit information to students about learning and teaching practices. Faculty participants usually employ one option from the list and students indicate the impact of this small change when they complete an online survey (taking about four to five minutes) at the end of the course. Please email wink@tilthighered.com to add your suggestions to the list.
Discuss assignments' learning goals and design rationale before students begin each assignment
- Chart out the skills students will practice in each assignment[Skills Charts.]
- Begin each assignment by defining the learning benefits to students (skills practiced, content knowledge gained, the tasks to be completed, the criteria for success)
- See Transparent Assignment Templates: for teachers , for students
- Examples of less transparent and more transparent assignments
- Example A: Sociology
- Example B: Science 101
- Example C: Psychology
- Example D: Communications
- Authors of Examples A-D describe the outcomes of their assignment revisions
- Example E: Biology
- Example F: Library research Assignment
- Example G: Criminal Justice In-Class activity
- Example H: Criminal Justice Assignment
- Example I: Political Science Assignment
- Example J: Criteria for Math Writing
- Example K - Environmental History
- Example L - Calculus
- Example M - Algebra
- Example N - Finance
- Before students begin working, discuss the criteria for success with them. Provide several examples of real-world work in the discipline and ask students to identify how the work meets, exceeds, or falls short of the criteria for their own upcoming work. This conversation helps students to understand what good work in the discipline looks like, and it helps them to judge the quality of their own work when they have time to improve it
- Self-guided Checklist for Designing a Transparent Assignment
Invite students to participate in class planning, agenda construction
- Give students an advanced agenda (2 or 3 main topics) 1-2 days before class, and ask them to identify related sub topics, examples or applications they wish to learn about
- Review the agenda at the outset of each class meeting, including students' subtopics
- Explicitly evaluate progress toward fulfilling the agenda at conclusion of each class meeting
- In large courses, a class committee gathers and contributes students' subtopics to agendas
- Inform students about ideas and questions to be discussed in upcoming class meetings
Gauge students' understanding during class via peer work on questions that require students to apply concepts you've taught
- Create scenarios/applications to test understanding of key concepts during class [Eric Mazur describes his method for peer instruction (9 min 45 sec – 11 min 24 sec). See example 1 description of Eric Mazur's method and video example of peer instruction, example 2 clickers best practices NCBI.]
- Allow discussion in pairs, instructor's feedback, and more discussion
- Provide explicit assessment of students' understanding, with further explanation if needed, before moving on to teach the next concept
Explicitly connect "how people learn" data with course activities when students struggle at difficult transition points
- Offer research-based explanations about concepts or tasks that students often struggle to master in your discipline [See examples below including Bloom, Bransford, Gregorc, Light, Perry.]
- Bloom's taxonomy, and discipline-specific versions. [See example .]
- William Perry's Phases of Intellectual Development, and subsequent work [See chart .]
- Kathleen Butler / Antony Gregorc's "e;Learning Styles"e;
- Richard Light's Assessment Seminars [See summary of findings.]
- Research on novice vs. expert thinking [See summary.]
- Neuroscience: synapse formation and learning [See excerpt from Bransford, et al., How People Learn.]
- Carol Dweck: fixed vs. growth mindset [Summary diagram]
Engage students in applying the grading criteria that you'll use on their work
Share criteria for success and examples of good work (as above in “discuss assignments' learning goals”), then ask students to apply these criteria in written feedback on peers' drafts
Debrief graded tests and assignments in class
- Help students identify patterns in their returned, graded work: what kinds of test questions were missed; what types of weaknesses characterize the assigned work
- Let students review any changes or revisions they made, and whether these resulted in improvements or not
- Ask students to record the process steps they used to prepare for the exam or complete the assignment, and to analyze: which parts of the process were efficient, effective, ineffective
Offer running commentary on class discussions, to indicate what modes of thought or disciplinary methods are in use
- Explicitly identify what types of questioning/thinking and what skills of the discipline your students are using in each class meeting
- Invite students to describe the steps in their thought process for addressing/solving a problem
- Engage students in evaluating which types of thinking are most effective for addressing the issues in each class discussion