Elaine Willerton, PhD
Assessment Director, SSBS
A few years ago, I attended a session at the Assessment Institute entitled
Transparency Across the Curriculum. One of the presenters, Mary-Ann
Winkelmes, introduced me to the Transparency in Learning and
Teaching (TILT) project. The project started in 2009 at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, but is now housed at Brandeis University.
In 2014, TILT began partnering with the Association of Colleges and
Universities to focus on advancing underserved students' success
in higher education. The TILT project helps faculty to implement a
transparent teaching framework that promotes students' success.
One of the most impressive aspects of this project is that it involves
data from universities across the U.S. and abroad. At the time of the
session that I attended, TILT participants included more than 25,000
students in hundreds of courses at 40 higher education institutions in
the U.S. and five other countries. In one experimental study involving
1180 students and 35 faculty, Winkelmes and colleagues found
that students who received more transparent instruction reported
gains in three areas that are important predictors of student success:
1) academic confidence, 2) sense of belonging, and 3) mastery of the
skills that employers value most when hiring. While the benefits for
all students in the aggregate who received more transparency were
statistically significant, the benefits for first-generation, low income,
and underrepresented students were greater, with a medium-to-large-
sized magnitude of effect. Important studies have already connected
academic confidence and sense of belonging with students' greater
persistence and higher grades.
Transparent teaching methods help students understand how
and why they are learning course content in particular ways.
Using the transparency framework requires just a small teaching
adjustment: make purposes, tasks, and criteria for academic work
more transparent, accessible and relevant for students. This can be
especially relevant in terms of transparent assignment design.
10
Transparency
IN TEACHING
