Revisiting Transparency in Learning and Teaching

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A workshop titled "CAT Talk: Revisiting Transparency in Learning and Teaching" originally presented for CAT+FD on 01 September 2026 by Dr. Jason Todd

Abstract

When an assignment's instructions leave the reasoning behind them unstated, students without insider knowledge of academic norms — often first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students — are left to guess at expectations, which widens achievement gaps rather than testing genuine skill. The Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework closes that gap by making an assignment's purpose, task, and evaluation criteria explicit, a low-cost change linked to measurable gains in academic confidence, sense of belonging, and retention.

  • Purpose clarifies what skills or knowledge an assignment builds and how it connects to the course, future coursework, or life beyond it.
  • Task breaks the assignment into ordered steps, naming common mistakes along the way rather than leaving students to discover them.
  • Criteria defines what quality work looks like, anchored to annotated examples rather than adjectives alone.
  • Generative AI drafting applies the same three components as an input checklist, letting instructors produce a thorough first draft of an assignment sheet from a short set of course-specific details.

Resources

TILT in the Professional, Graduate, and Clinical Setting

At the graduate and professional level, TILT is promising but not yet backed by significant evidence. Little research that examines TILT within a graduate or professional-school setting is available. The closest evidence at the professional-school level is only TILT-adjacent: a retrospective audit of a medical-degree curriculum that made capability standards, assessment alignment, performance expectations, and student data explicit found that all students met program expectations. The study bundled transparency with programmatic assessment and a portfolio, and had no comparison group.

TILT remains a low-burden design practice worth adopting at any level, but its effectiveness at the graduate and professional level needs to be evaluated locally rather than assumed from undergraduate data. The lingering question isn't whether TILT clarifies expectations, but whether that clarity translates into demonstrable professional competence. This tension is sharpest in clinical courses. A well-designed clinical TILT implementation would make the hidden rules of clinical performance visible before a student is judged against them. Direct TILT-specific evaluations in clinical education remain thin, but a 2025 nursing framework combined TILT with competency-based education and universal design, revising assignments and assessments with learner input and support from instructional-design and disability professionals.

References

  • Winkelmes, M.-A. (2008). Building assignments that teach. Essays on Teaching Excellence, 19(5).
  • Winkelmes, M.-A. (2013). Transparency in teaching: Faculty share data and improve students' learning. Liberal Education, 99(2).
  • Winkelmes, M.-A. (2015). Equity of access and equity of experience in higher education. The National Teaching & Learning Forum, 24(2), 1–4.
  • Winkelmes, M.-A., Bernacki, M., Butler, J., Zochowski, M., Golanics, J., & Weavil, K. H. (2016). A teaching intervention that increases underserved college students' success. Peer Review, 18(1/2), 31–37.
  • Gianoutsos, D., & Winkelmes, M.-A. (2016). Navigating with transparency: Enhancing underserved student success through transparent learning and teaching in the classroom and beyond. Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Association of Developmental Educators.
  • Winkelmes, M.-A., Boye, A., & Tapp, S. (Eds.). (2019). Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership: A guide to implementing the transparency framework institution-wide to improve learning and retention. Stylus Publishing (Routledge).
  • TILT Higher Ed. (2019). Recent findings: Transparency in learning and teaching in higher education.
  • Emekako et al., 2025. Transparent Design Approaches to Enable Equitable Student Gains and Success in Higher Education: A Scoping Review. Journal of Education and Learning Technology.
  • Dean et al., 2023. A Transparent Curriculum Design and Capability-Based Assessment Portfolio Facilitates Self-Directed Learning. Education sciences.
  • Bevers et al., 2016. Transforming GE Courses from Predictive Contexts to Engage Unstructured Twenty-First-Century Problems.
  • Arbour et al., 2025. Competency-Based Education as a Catalyst for Inclusion: Practical Pathways for Supporting Nursing Students. Nurse Educator.
  • O'Rae & Kirkpatrick, 2025. A Redesign of a Clinical Evaluation Tool to Promote Clear Expectations and Reflective Practice. Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
  • Palmer et al., 2018. Measuring Transparency: A Learning-Focused Assignment Rubric. To Improve the Academy.
  • Henderson et al., 2023. Developing student nurses' evaluative judgement in clinical practice tertiary education: A systematic scoping review of teaching and assessment methods. Nurse Education in Practice.
  • Gray et al., 2023. The assessment of undergraduate bachelor of nursing students in the collaborative clusters education model: A qualitative descriptive design. Nurse Education in Practice.

Further Reading

  • Jackson, P. W. (1968). Life in classrooms. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
  • Margolis, E. (Ed.). (2001). The hidden curriculum in higher education. Routledge.
  • Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.
  • Finley, A., & McNair, T. (2013). Assessing underserved students' engagement in high-impact practices. AAC&U.
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