High Impact Practices and Design

As many of us reflect on the past academic term, I would like to share an updated study on High Impact Practices (HIPs). The article is entitled “Another Look at High-Impact Practices in Teacher Education: Linking Practices with Engagement” was authored by Koubek and Rodriguez (December 2023). [note: I am thrilled to read that this research cited the work of several of our SoTL colleagues: Grabowsky, Hargis, Davidson, Paynter, Suh, and Wright].

HIPs, as adopted by the AAC&U, are practices that promote engagement and learning as measured on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). HIPs adopted by the AAC&U consist of 11 practices which are: First-Year Experiences (FYE), Common Intellectual Experiences, Learning Communities, Writing-Intensive Courses, Collaborative Projects, Undergraduate Research, Global Learning, Service Learning, Community-Based Learning, Internships, Capstone Courses, and e-Portfolios. Features of these practices have been shown to promote engagement and learning (Kuh et al., 2017):

Performance expectations set at high levels
Significant investment of concentrated effort by students over an extended period of time
Interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters
Experiences with diversity
Frequent, timely, and constructive feedback
Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications
Public demonstration of competence
Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning

The primary research question was:

In what ways does the design of course activities associated with HIPs result in engagement and learning in accordance with those activities based on students’ responses to NSSE?

One of the most noteworthy findings from both studies is that students are most engaged through activities that are tied to their future jobs. Faculty relied on the importance of HIPs as essential components of engagement, and students reported that to be the case. This finding concurs with the outcomes of Zilvinskis’s (2019) study in which real-world application activities were associated with positive student outcomes. It also supports Grabowsky et al.’s (2017) idea that experiential learning has an impact on student engagement and gains in learning. Faculty also emphasized the importance of making curricular connections. Students appreciated the way content was linked to prior courses and their own experiences and reported those activities as particularly engaging. Faculty said they spent considerable time among themselves aligning courses to ensure that students build skills effectively from one course to the next, and students seemed to recognize that effort and were able to be more engaged as a result of it.

References

Grabowsky, G. L., Hargis, J., Davidson, J., Paynter, A., Suh, J., & Wright, C. (2017). Coral reefs, convicts, cadavers, coffee shops and couture: Customizing experiential learning to increase comfort and engagement. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 14(3), 1-11.

Koubek, E. & Rodriguez, R. (2023). Another look at High-Impact Practices: Linking practices with engagement, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 17( 2), Article 11. Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2023.17211

Zilvinskis, J. (2019). Measuring quality in high-impact practices. The International Journal of Higher Education Research, 78, 687–709. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00365-9