High Impact Practices
High Impact Practices in General Education at UM-Flint
We all value good teaching and know that it takes many different forms in and outside the classroom, studio, or lab. We all want students to be able to integrate their learning and apply it in new contexts, whether these are in different classes across students’ undergraduate education, in their careers, or for lifelong learning. But are some educational strategies more impactful? Do some strategies better facilitate learning integration and transfer?
For nearly two decades, the American Association of Colleges & Universities has said yes and endorses educational strategies grouped by the label “High Impact Practices.” HIPs are teaching and learning strategies that research shows are correlated with high levels of student engagement and improve persistence, retention, and graduation rates for all students. Crucially, this improvement includes students from historically underserved or marginalized groups. In alphabetical order, the current HIPs list is:
- Capstone courses and projects
- Collaborative Assignments and Projects
- Common Intellectual experiences
- Diversity/Global Learning
- ePortfolios
- First-Year Seminars and Experiences
- Internships
- Learning Communities
- Service Learning, Community-Based Learning
- Undergraduate Research
- Writing Intensive Courses
But, as research on HIPs reminds us, the high impact is not found in the name itself. Any one of these strategies can fall short. The kinds of activities that make HIPs impactful – the elements of high impact or the high impact activities in HIPs – include:
- Performance expectations are set at appropriately high levels.
- Significant investment of concentrated effort by students over an extended period.
- Interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters.
- Frequent, timely, and constructive feedback.
- Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning
- Opportunities to discover the relevance of learning through real-world applications.
- Public demonstration of competence.
- Making a difference for others.
- Agency and accomplishment.
- Experiences with diversity, wherein students are exposed to and must contend with people and circumstances that different from those with which students are familiar
So, what makes HIPs impactful is in the design. It’s in how the impactful elements are planned, delivered, and assessed at the course level, within a wider curriculum, and across curriculum and co-curriculum. What is exciting about this is that with or without the officially recognized and capitalized HIP, we can create a high impact in our courses and throughout our programs when we design them with these elements in mind.
You can find examples of embedding high impact in General Education at UM-Flint on the intranet.