# Transparent assignment description: blank Version 1.0, August 2026. Copy this into a new document and fill it in. Delete the bracketed guidance as you go. The structure follows the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework developed by Mary-Ann Winkelmes. The official TILT template is at ; this is my own working version of the same three questions, not a copy of theirs. The test of whether it is finished: hand it to someone outside your field and ask them what a good submission would look like. If they cannot tell you, keep going. --- ## [Assignment name] **Due:** [date and time, including the time zone if any student is remote] ### Purpose [Why this exists. Not "to assess your understanding of X." What the student will be able to do afterward that they cannot do now, and where that shows up later in the course, in the qualifying exam, or in the work they will actually do. Two to four sentences.] [If you are deliberately withholding method because struggling with it is the point, say so here rather than letting them think you forgot. Something like: the purpose of this assignment is for you to invent and test your own approach, so I am not giving you a procedure.] ### Skills and knowledge this builds [Three to six items. Name the skill, not the topic. "Deciding which measure of association the design supports" rather than "measures of association."] - - - ### Task **Before you start:** - [What to reread, review, or set up. Be specific about which lecture, which chapter, which dataset.] - **What to do:** [Write this as prose in the order the student will actually work, not as a list of deliverables. Where a step is the one people get wrong, say so in the step. If the assignment has a natural halfway point, name it, because that is where someone who is behind will decide whether to ask for help.] **What to hand in:** - [Format, length, file type, where it goes, naming convention.] ### Criteria for success [Tiers, not adjectives. "Thorough" and "clear" are not criteria; they are the reason your co-instructor grades differently than you do. For each component, write what earns full credit, what earns partial, and what earns none. See `rubric-tiers-skeleton.md`.] | Component | Full credit | Partial credit | No credit | Pts | |---|---|---|---|---| | | | | | | [If an exemplar exists, link it here and say what makes it good. If one does not exist, the first strong submission you receive becomes next year's exemplar, with the student's permission.] ### Use of AI [State the rule for this specific assignment rather than pointing at a course-level policy, because the rule usually differs by task. Say what is permitted, what must be disclosed, and why the line is where it is.]