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How Can You Make Assignments Transparent?

The introductory video to this collection highlights the purposes behind developing transparent assignments, including increases to educational equity. The remaining resources help you get started and offer you concrete ways to continue to improve the transparency of your assignments.

Course and Assignment Design
Updated May 2026
Michael Palmer headshot
Michael Palmer
Barbara Fried Director & Professor
Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost
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Using a Transparent Framework to Remove Barriers to College Students’ Success

TILT Higher Ed

This short video, based on research from the TILT Higher Education project, explains how transparent assignment design improves educational equity, student learning, and other student success outcomes.

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Michael Palmer

The length of this video (42 seconds!) by project leader, Mary Winkelmes, attests to how simple of an idea transparent assignment design is. Don't let the simplicity detract from the importance, though. Articulating an assignment's purpose, tasks, and criteria has a host of positive educational outcomes, including increased learning and sense of belonging.

Video
42 seconds
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Getting Started Designed Transparent Assignments

The Ohio State University Teaching and Learning Resource Center

This template walk you through the process of developing transparent assignments.

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Michael Palmer

The page from The Ohio State Teaching and Learning Resource Center presents a brief how-to guide for designing transparent assignments, a template you can download, and a straightforward example.

Website
4-5 minutes
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Checklist for Designing a Transparent Assignment

TILT Higher Ed

This handy checklist will help you think through various ways to make your assignment’s purpose, task, and criteria more transparent.

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Michael Palmer

This handy checklist will help you think through various ways to make your assignment’s purpose, task, and criteria more transparent.

File
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Measuring Transparency: A Learning-Focused Assignment Rubric

To Improve the Academy

This valid rubric for transparent assignments defines criteria characteristic of well-designed assignments; breaks the criteria down into concrete, measurable components; and suggests what evidence for each component might look like.

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Michael Palmer

By combining recommendations for effective assignment design with principles of transparency and the value-expectancy theory of achievement motivation, this rubric will help you assess the quality and guide the design of your assignments. It moves beyond strict definitions of purpose, tasks, and criteria, and suggests how these are presented to students matter greatly.

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By combining recommendations for effective assignment design with principles of transparency and the value-expectancy theory of achievement motivation, we developed a rubric capable of for assessing the quality and guiding the design of assignment descriptions. This rubric defines criteria characteristic of well-designed assignments; breaks the criteria down into concrete, measurable components; and suggests what evidence for each component might look like. While the full rubric is valid for major, signature assignments, it can accommodate a diverse range. It can also provide summative, quantitative information to educational developers for research and formative, qualitative feedback to instructors for gauging the quality of their assignments.

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