Pointing a Telescope Toward the Night Sky: Transparency and Intentionality as Teaching Techniques

How often do you provide your students with a telescope to better view your instructional intentions? Recent research from The Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has shown that students benefit when teachers articulate the thought processes behind their instructional decisions and goals. How can transparent teaching practices enhance the professional practice of instruction librarians, even when leading a one-shot session? This workshop will explore the research behind transparent teaching, consider the assumptions that underlie it, and provide practical ways to implement it.

Participants will:

define transparent teaching in order to be able to identify transparent teaching practices when they encounter them.use a template to compare transparently-designed assignments and non-transparently-designed assignments in order to examine how existing teaching activities can be transformed to incorporate aspects of transparent teaching.collaboratively brainstorm ways to incorporate transparent teaching into their own pedagogical practices in order to consider a variety of different approaches for potential use.

Intended audience: Brand new to the topic