Transform Your Courses with Transparent Teaching

Designing a college class is a multi-layered process; it involves curating content but also creating (and aligning) learning goals, practice opportunities, feedback loops, and assessments. This pedagogical architecture takes a lot of thought and effort, but it often remains invisible to students, who may not realize that our assignments or in-class activities are the result of careful, intentional design. Many students see their education as a matter of “jumping through the hoops” to get the desired grade/certificate/diploma. Helping them understand the pedagogical design of our courses can boost motivation (by countering the perception of assignments as “busy work”), improve metacognitive skills (by clarifying the cognitive moves required for academic success), and, most importantly, support deeper and longer lasting learning.

The benefits of transparent teaching (i. e. teaching that lifts the veil to communicate the “why” of course/assignment/assessment design) do not end there. Teaching transparently helps students see the value of the learning tasks we ask them to perform. And, since perceptions of value are a key component of motivation, teaching transparently can motivate students to care more about the course and to work harder on tasks they might otherwise dismiss as pointless or tedious. Transparency also helps build trust between students and instructors by sending a reassuring message: “I have curated your learning experience in this way for a reason. You’ll be amazed at the progress you will make if you follow these carefully designed steps. You are in good hands.”

Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy, in their book Inclusive Teaching. Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom (2022), describe transparent teaching as “running a semester-long marketing campaign for how learning works and how [instructors] are aligning [their] teaching to these best practices” (34). Transparent teachers make a habit of communicating their pedagogical choices to students throughout the academic term, from the way they phrase their syllabi, to the wording of their assignment prompts, to informal in-class and out-of-class communications (so called non-content instructor talk). Hogan and Sathy offer useful examples of transparent language that can be easily incorporated into many kinds of class sessions. For example, after an especially difficult exercise that might have left some students feeling discouraged (or even questioning whether they belong in your discipline at all), the instructor might say, “I expected some of you to struggle through that activity, but I wanted you to make mistakes to help you realize that your understanding of that concept was not quite as deep as you thought it was just by reading about it in your homework” (34). Or, following a successful think-pair-share activity, an instructor might say, “Look how much the whole class has improved on this concept simply by justifying your thoughts to each other. That kind of practice helps build connections in our brains” (34). Such messages can go a long way in encouraging students to persist in difficult courses—and in helping them embrace active learning modalities that require involvement and effort.

Transparent teaching can increase motivation to learn, boost student metacognitive awareness, and build trust in the professor. It requires little effort on the part of the instructor but can yield powerful benefits for students. Even better, teaching transparently supports educational equity by making visible the inner workings of college courses and academic disciplines, and helping students become active agents of their own learning. How might you start crafting your pedagogical “marketing campaign” this term?