Overview

Transparent design is embedded in the Course Design Standards:

5. LEARNER-ENABLING DESIGN 

We optimise our learning environments to build our students’ capacity to confidently and capably manage their own learning and enable all of our students to succeed to the best of their ability. 

Transparent design involves making explicit to students the purpose of doing the task/assessment, the knowledge and skills that they will develop, and the ways in which they might use the knowledge and skills in the future, including for employability and life-wide learning.

Transparent design means that students will be provided with assessment criteria, standards and real-world examples of the enactment and achievement of these standards. 

Transparent design is particularly important for students who may not have had exposure to ways of thinking and acting in professions and disciplines, such as first-in-family students from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Transparent teaching involves:

• Discussing the goals and rationale behind the design of assessment before students start the assignment
• Engaging students as partners in the design of learning experiences and assessment
• Continually gauging students' understanding
• Using metacognitive (thinking about thinking) strategies to help students understand how they think and learning
• Have students engage with the assessment criteria and standards by peer assessment, self assessment and analysis of examples
• Debriefing completed assignments 
• Explicity identify, model and discuss disciplinary questioning and thinking processes needed for the task

Support Resources

• Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

  Examples and resources for transparent teaching and assessment

• Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership

  Mary-Ann Winkelmes, Alison Boy, Suzan Tapp (2019) Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership: A Guide to Implementing the Transparency Framework Institution-Wide to Improve Learning and Retention.

• A Renewed Case for Student Success: Using Transparency in Assignment Design When Teaching Remotely

  Article from Faculty Focus by Devshikha Bose, Sarah Dalrymple, and Susan Shadle

Contributed by

• Learning Futures
  

Preferred Citation

Learning Futures (2020). Transparent Design. Retrieved from https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/exlnt/entry/9229/view