Now that we’ve covered the content knowledge and explained the way HIT can guide your conversations with your student employees, let’s break down a task using the HIT equation.
We’ve provided a transparently-designed breakdown of this process:
Purpose: The purpose of this book is to develop a new way of thinking about student worker training and tasks as a way to collaborate with them in the creation of a deeper understanding of how the work they’re doing applies to real life, their education and their impact on their community.
- Skills: You will use the following skills to complete the task:
- Relate knowledge from several areas
- Translate knowledge into a new context
- Use concepts in a new situation
- Recognize hidden meanings
- Knowledge: You will become familiar with the following important content knowledge:
Task: Apply the High-Impact Transparency (HIT) equations to a student worker task to create a framework for training that task. You will do this by completing the following:
- Identify a task using the provided job description.
- List the skills and knowledge related to the identified task.
- Analyze the task to determine the criteria for success.
- Use the criteria for success to define the purpose of the task.
- Interpret how the skills/knowledge and purpose can describe the work.
- Interpret how the skills/knowledge and purpose can connect the work to a deeper meaning.
- Discuss how these conversations can be had with students to create that metacognitive link between their work and their real world experiences.
Criteria for Success: You will have successfully used this book by taking away the following knowledge:
- An understanding of how high-impact practices can be improved by applying transparent design principles.
- How to use the HIT equations to create conversations with student workers about the meaning of their work and its implications outside of this specific job role.
Example:
| Task: | Check in/check out materials |
| Skills/Knowledge (A): | Skills: critical thinking; observing and recalling information
Knowledge: Check in/check out process; understanding of the fulfillment module |
| Criteria for success (B): | – See items in patron’s record
– You hear the “beep” and see the item show up on screen – Patron doesn’t trigger sensor when they leave – Lack of problems i.e. not getting claims returned – Items are found on hold shelf when searched for |
| Purpose (C): | To be the steward of the collection by ensuring that all inventory is properly accounted for. |
| Resume description (D): | – Expertly used the library database to successfully process patron transactions
– Maintained accurate inventory of library materials by effectively completing patron transactions |
| Deeper meaning (E): | Patrons feel that the library is a reliable resource for them. |
Prior to having discussions with our student employees, our supervisor team decided to collaborate on completing a HIT worksheet (PDF) for the job responsibilities on our circulation assistant job description. Find more examples from this process here: HIT Student Assistant Job Responsibilities (Croydon 2021) (PDF).
We then had one-on-one discussions with the students as they were doing the tasks and talked them through to the deeper meaning. By completing the HIT worksheets ahead of time, we became better guides for the discussions with the student workers.
As you work with our HIT methods, please feel free to adapt them to suit your needs and goals.
