High-Impact Instructional Practices Online

This week, I would like to share recent research (November 2019) on High-Impact Instructional Practices (HIIP), which we might consider when building or updating our courses online. The open source paper is entitled, "Unpacking High-Impact Instructional Practices and Student Engagement" by Rodriguez and Koubek.

The authors examine the "relationship between HIIPs as adopted by the AAC&U, student engagement, and learning outcomes as measured on the National Survey of Student Engagement. Major themes included the importance of applied learning, collaborative assignments, understanding diverse points of view and constructive feedback."

This research cites Kuh et al., (2017) work detailing 8 “key features” of HIIP that could account for improved student learning outcomes.

1. Performance expectations set at appropriately high levels;

2. Significant investment of concentrated effort by students over an extended period of time;

3. Interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters;

4. Experiences with diversity, wherein students engage in ideas that differ from their own;

5. Frequent, timely, and constructive feedback;

6. Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications;

7. Public demonstration of competence; and

8. Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning.

Perhaps as we migrate our courses online and/or continue to evolve our online opportunities, we could consider integrating some of these attributes into our pedagogy to further engage our students participation aligned with major learning outcomes.

Rodriguez, Raymond J. and Koubek, Ekaterina (2019) "Unpacking High-Impact Instructional Practices and Student Engagement in a Teacher Preparation Program," International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(3) https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2019.130311