Educational Development Digest: January 2025

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By Melissa Williams, Instructional Designer, Minnesota State

As Minnesota State continues our Equity 2030 work, faculty sometimes worry that implementing equitable teaching practices will require a complete overhaul of their classes and a significant addition to their workload. There are, however, some practical, efficient, and effective ways to enhance equitable learning in the classroom, such as TILTing your course.

What is TILT?

TILT, an acronym for Transparency in Learning and Teaching, is an educational development and research project that began in 2009 and has involved over 25,000 students in higher education. A 2015 study found that TILTing just two assignments in a class improved students’ academic confidence, sense of belonging, and awareness of their development of useful skills for their professional futures—key factors in retention and completion rates. TILT is especially useful for our Equity 2030 work in that the effect for first generation, multiracial, and low socio-economic status students was even more significant. In other words, every student benefitted, but the opportunity gaps that Equity 2030 seeks to eliminate were also narrowed, thereby leveling the playing field for all students (Winkelmes 2017). This simple approach involves being transparent with students about three aspects of their work: purpose, task, and criteria.

Purpose: What is the value of the work to the student?

• Students need to know not just what to do, but why it matters—for the class, personally, and/or professionally.
• Relevance is a key tenet of effective learning (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2024).
• Connecting new learning to prior learning and experiences is a vital element of culturally responsive teaching (Hammond, 2015).

Task: What exactly should students do, not do, how, and with what tools or resources?

• Not every student has the “navigational capital” (Yosso, 2005) to complete even the most common assignments.
• Break instructions down into steps, avoid assuming prior skill/knowledge, and consider some initial modeling or practice to start students on the right path.
• Individual campuses have their own resources: writing centers, various educational technologies, and more. Ensure students know that resources that will help them complete a particular assignment even exist, then explain how to access them.

Criteria: How will students’ work be evaluated, and what does success look like?

• Provide a checklist or rubric in advance.
• Ensure that you are evaluating students on what is actually being taught; grade for competence rather than compliance (Schwartz, 2019).
• Offer exemplars, ideally more than one (to avoid the common objection that students will just copy the example), and conduct a class activity where students apply the criteria to an example or a peer’s work.

Learn More

When students know the why, what, and how of an assignment, they are much more likely to be engaged, feel empowered, and be successful! For more information and helpful resources, visit the TILT Higher Ed website, use the TILT template to convert an assignment, or explore some of the Transparent Methods that can help you TILT your class even more.

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By Elizabeth Harsma, Program Director for Technology Integrated Learning, Minnesota State

This D2L Brightspace course template is a complete course with sample Welcome module content, sample syllabus framework, and two layout options for course module organization. It helps you:

• Organize your course
• Use accessible webpage templates
• Apply language, activities, and assessments for equitable teaching and
• Access resources and strategies for course design and facilitation

This is the third version of this template, with updates to enhance equity, accessibility, and layout. Changes include:

• Equity:
  • Models humanized practices for instructor presence and interaction.
  • Offers ideas for equitable language, tone, policy, and activity/assessment design.
  • Infuses equitable teaching practice examples, tips, and resources throughout.
• Accessibility:
  • Uses accessible HTML webpage templates with consistent labeling and organization.
  • Includes D2L Brightspace Accessibility checker reminders and digital accessibility tips.
  • Provides an accessibility guide aligned with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1AA Standards.
• Layout:
  • Uses HTML Version 3.0 webpage templates with accordion and tab elements.
  • Models a simple course layout with options for even more resources and ideas for course design and academic technology.
  • Provides a course quality guide aligned with Quality Matters and Online Learning Consortium.

Download and import the template for foundational course design that elevates your authentic instructor presence and supports equitable and accessible student learning.

• Download the D2L Brightspace Course Design Template 2024 from Opendora
• How to import the course package into D2L Brightspace
• Watch the D2L Brightspace Course Design 2024 Course Tour (captioned video, 4:57 minutes)

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By Megan Babel, Communications Coordinator, Minnesota State

What is happening in the Minnesota State Academic and Student Affairs (ASA) division? You may be receiving updates from ASA units through emails and different groups on Microsoft Teams. If you would like to know more about what’s happening, two good options are subscribing to the ASA Newsletter, and browsing (or bookmarking) ASA Connect pages.

ASA Newsletter

The Minnesota State ASA Newsletter is designed to communicate news, current projects and initiatives, upcoming events, and opportunities available to the faculty and staff of Minnesota State colleges and universities.

Share Your News

Minnesota State employees, whether at the system office or at one of our 54 campuses, are welcome to submit a newsletter post that is of interest to the Minnesota State community. Share your news, celebrations, or events.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

To receive an email each time a new post is published, subscribe to the ASA Newsletter. Join over 1150 other subscribers and stay informed!

ASA Connect

ASA Connect is an internal site where Minnesota State ASA staff can share information to Minnesota State faculty and staff. Where Teams and email is good for two-way and timely communication, ASA Connect allows for a static, consistent space for individuals to learn more about projects and initiatives happening within ASA. Different divisions within Minnesota State have their own Connect sites. See the Connect User Guide for more information.

Browse ASA Connect by Topic

The main topics include:

The additional content is organized by audience, acknowledging that some content overlaps:

*While students do not have access to ASA Connect, the Student Success Resources topic refers to the content that students might more directly interact with, and the content is to help faculty and staff with these topic areas through guides, resources, communities of practice, and more.

Visit ASA Connect

There are several ways to access ASA Connect, note that you will be prompted to sign in with your StarID@MinnState.edu and password if you are not already.

Recognizing that different units and teams work differently, some ASA Connect pages may take you to different SharePoint and Team sites. However, ASA Connect acts as the singular location to find these sites. We welcome you to bookmark, browse, and provide feedback.

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