MIT Inclusive + Equitable Syllabus Rubric for Educational Researchers and Developers1
To cultivate learning environments in which all students feel valued and supported in their learning, inclusive and equitable teaching strategies should be built into course design and delivery. For those working with instructors on curriculum development, the course syllabus can provide an easily accessible source of information about the learning activities, teaching methods, assessments, and policies included in the course.
The MIT Teaching + Learning Lab has developed the Inclusive + Equitable Syllabus Rubric to help instructional developers and educational researchers identify the extent to which equity-minded strategies and practices are present in course syllabi.
About the Syllabus Rubric
The syllabus rubric consists of 24 criteria, each rated along four levels: not present (0), present but unclear (1), present and somewhat clear (2), and present and clear (3). Each criterion is accompanied by a detailed, qualitative description of observable characteristics at each level. Twenty-two criteria2 map onto the following four principles of Equity-focused Teaching3:
- Transparency involves clearly communicating why students are learning course concepts and skills, how learning activities and assessments support their learning, and what students need to do to succeed. It also involves explaining the reasoning underlying course policies. [10 criteria]
- Academic Belonging refers to students’ sense of being accepted and valued in academic classrooms by building relationships with peers and with the instructor(s) and teaching staff, and by recognizing the relevance and value of their coursework. [3 criteria]
- Structure describes a systematic approach to designing course elements and activities to help students learn and apply concepts and skills, as well as protocols or processes that support equitable opportunities for students to participate and interact in the classroom. [5 criteria]
- Critical Engagement with Difference acknowledges and responds to students’ different identities, experiences, perspectives, strengths, and needs by affirming the value of diversity, recognizing different perspectives and problem-solving approaches, and allowing for a variety of pathways to successful learning in the course. [4 criteria]
There is conceptual overlap for some criteria across the four principles, which is noted in the rubric.
For more information on existing applications of the syllabus rubric in the Teaching + Learning Lab, see Thomas et al. (2025) on the development and implementation of the syllabus rubric and Soicher et al. (2024) on the methodology of the comprehensive project that includes the syllabus rubric as a primary data source.
More details on the development of the rubric, the coding process used to analyze course syllabi, and outcomes of the analysis will be published in a forthcoming manuscript. In the meantime, please reach out to tll@mit.edu if you’d like more information.
You may use the syllabus rubric for research purposes as long as you include the following citation:
© 2025 by Ruthann Thomas, MIT Teaching + Learning Lab | licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Requisite Knowledge to Apply the Rubric
The following concepts inform the rubric and will help users interpret and apply the rubric criteria as they evaluate syllabi.
Learning outcomes
Relevant criteria: 1a Intended learning outcomes, 3b Alignment: Learning outcomes and assessments
Specific and measurable learning outcomes include active verbs that articulate what students should be able to do with the concepts or skills they are learning in the course. These actions can be observed and compared to assess student learning. Active verbs help students interpret how they will demonstrate their learning. For example, in an MIT Physics course on Electricity and Magnetism, the instructors include a rather non-specific learning goal to “tease out the laws of electromagnetism from our everyday experience.” However, by articulating three additional objectives that describe what it means to “tease out the laws of E&M (“describe in words”, “represent mathematically”, “predict”), they clearly convey how students will demonstrate their achievement of this broader objective. The specificity and measurability of learning outcomes differentiate between the levels of the rubric for criteria 1a (“intended learning outcomes”) under the principle of transparency.
Alignment of learning outcomes and assessments
Relevant criteria: 1a Intended learning outcomes, 3b Alignment: Learning outcomes and assessments
The specific and measurable learning outcomes should directly connect to the primary assessments used to measure student learning, such as the exams, projects, and assignments. The active verb used in the learning objective should be reflected in what students are asked to do on the assessment. For example, in the MIT Physics course on Electricity and Magnetism, students may be presented with an everyday situation and asked to either describe in words how concepts in electromagnetism come into play in the situation. For a more detailed explanation of alignment, see the TLL resource on Backward Design.
Formative and summative assessments
Relevant criteria: 3a Embedded practice opportunities, 3c Feedback and revision of assessments
Summative assessments
Measuring a student’s knowledge and skills at the end of a unit of instruction using traditional exams, papers, or projects is referred to as summative assessment. Summative assessments are intended to be evaluative and are typically “higher stakes” in that a student’s performances on summative assessments factor into a significant fraction of the student’s overall grade. The feedback given on summative assessments–-usually a grade–-tends to be construed as justifying the grade received, not necessarily furthering students’ understanding.
While there are ways for students to learn by reflecting upon their performance on summative assessments, because such assessments are evaluative in nature, students usually don’t have a chance to demonstrate that they have learned from these assessments. In contrast to summative assessments, formative assessment plays a significant role in assessing learning.
Formative assessments
Formative assessments are frequent, “low stakes” opportunities for students to monitor their progress towards learning goals. Many in-class activities and outside-class assignments, such as quizzes, small-group discussions, and weekly homework assignments, can be considered formative assessments if students receive timely feedback on their performance. Feedback is critical because it enables students to gauge their developing comprehension accurately. Feedback on formative assessments is intended to help students identify gaps in their knowledge to modify their study strategies accordingly. In particular, novices are not good at self-evaluating their comprehension, so formative assessment opportunities are particularly critical in the early development of expertise (Hacker et al., 2000). For more information about assessments, visit TLL’s resource Assess for Learning.
Structures of class participation
Relevant criteria: 3d Participation structure and variety
We designed this criterion to assess the variety and scope of structured methods to encourage all students to participate. This criterion draws on guidelines laid out in CAST’s Universal Design for Learning framework, which encourages instructors to provide multiple ways for students to communicate and express their knowledge, ideas, and concepts in interactive elements of the class. For example, a syllabus might include a section describing a typical class session that provides opportunities for students to respond to in-class polls and to participate in small group and whole class discussions.
- Individual instructors or departments who wish to engage in formative (self-)assessment to improve their syllabi should consult the Syllabus Checklist to Support Student Belonging & Achievement. The checklist was adapted from this rubric to support evaluation and iteration on the course design and inclusive and equitable teaching practices described in the syllabus. It also includes excerpts from MIT syllabi that illustrate characteristics of inclusive and equitable syllabi. In the checklist version, we merged ‘belonging’ and ‘critical engagement with difference’ due to conceptual overlap and to simplify the navigation and application of the checklist. ↩︎
- Two additional criteria measure the clarity, organization, and visual accessibility of the syllabus. ↩︎
- The four principles used in our rubric are based on Elements of Equity-focused Teaching from the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) at the University of Michigan (2022) and the work of Artze-Vega et al. (2024). ↩︎
References
Soicher, R.N., Baker, A.R. & Thomas, R.C. A Mixed-Methods Research Design to Advance Inclusive and Equitable Teaching. Innov High Educ 49, 1105–1125 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-024-09741-5
Thomas, R. C., Soicher, R., BuGhanem, L. & Baker, A. R., (2025). A syllabus analysis tool to advance inclusive and equitable teaching. To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, 44(2). https://doi.org/10.3998/tia.7209