Why
Providing clear explicit assignment expectations helps all students be more successful. It also helps you as an instructor get clear on what you’re looking for on key assignments so you can better explain assignments to students from the beginning: in short, you will be more transparent. Choose this task if you tend to get a lot of student questions about a particular assignment or want to think through a new one.
How
1. Draft a description for a new assignment or an assignment that has, or you think might, inspire many questions or cause confusion. This may be a weekly at-home assignment in which students are doing something new or different, an in-class assignment, or a larger project or creative task. Check out the CTL resources for general guidance on assignments.
2. Take your assignment description and reformat it using the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) Template.
Including the assignment's purpose, task, and criteria in your description makes the assignment more transparent to students.
To confirm that you have a transparent assignment, use the checklist for designing transparent assignments.
3. Review these examples of less and more transparent assignments from the TILT Higher Ed website to see how other faculty have structured their descriptions. Each of the examples provided begins with the instructor’s original or “less transparent” assignment, followed by the revised, “more transparent” assignment. Please note that these assignment descriptions were written prior to the introduction of generative AI.
Lean into Fall
This page is a part of the Assessments and Feedback session of Lean into Fall, the CTL's quick start guide for the semester.
Want to talk to us?
We can look at what you worked on together for a quick feedback or schedule a longer session to dive deeper and work on this together.