High Impact Practices (HIPs) are evidence-based teaching and learning practices that have been shown to enhance learning and student success in college. These practices go beyond traditional classroom lecture-and-test models by providing students with engaging, real-life, hands-on learning experiences.
Characteristics of HIPs
The following characteristics help explain why High Impact Practices lead to greater student engagement and support students in achieving their goals.
HIPs encourage students to reflect on their experiences and connect them to their values and beliefs. This reflection helps students understand themselves better, see their role in the larger world, and develop the confidence and ethical grounding to make positive contributions to society.
HIPs require students to dedicate substantial time and effort to meaningful tasks. This commitment deepens their engagement with the activity, strengthens their academic dedication, and enhances their overall college experience.
HIPs provide students with regular and immediate feedback on their performance. Whether through formal evaluations or informal interactions, students receive continuous guidance and support from faculty, supervisors, and peers, to help them to improve and succeed.
HIPs expose students to diverse perspectives by engaging them with people and situations different from their own. These experiences challenge students to think critically, adapt to new circumstances, and develop new ways of responding to intellectual and practical tasks.
HIPs set challenging performance standards for students through demanding assignments and projects. These high expectations, tailored to students’ initial abilities, encourage them to strive for excellence and surpass their current skill levels.
HIPs can help students showcase their skills and knowledge through public demonstrations, such as oral presentations or narrative evaluations from supervisors. These activities provide opportunities for students to be assessed and recognized for their achievements in a public setting.
HIPs give students the chance to see how their learning applies in various real-world contexts, both on and off campus. These experiences help integrate, synthesize, and apply knowledge, leading to deep and meaningful learning.
Example: Out-of-class activities in which students in a learning community come together at least once weekly to attend a lecture and/or a discussion of common readings and assignments facilitated by an upper-division peer mentor. These opportunities allow students to feel part of a larger community and receive feedback from someone with more skill and experience in an area of common interest.
Source: Ensuring Quality & Taking High-Impact Practices to Scale by George D. Kuh and Ken O’Donnell, with Case Studies by Sally Reed. (Washington, DC: AAC&U, 2013). For information, more resources, and research from LEAP.
Examples of High Impact Practices (HIPs)
Capstone Assignments & Projects
These are culminating experiences that require students nearing the end of their college years to create a project of some sort that integrates and applies what they have learned.
Career Exploration
Students can meet with Career Specialists to explore their interests, skills, and best-fit careers; explore majors and careers that match their values and interests; and take a variety of assessments to discover their interests and strengths.
Collaborative Assignments & Projects
Collaborative learning merges 2 key goals:
- Learning to work and solve problems with others
- Sharpening one’s individual understanding by active listening to the insights of others
Examples range from study groups within a course, team-based assignments and writing, and cooperative projects and research.
Common Intellectual Experiences
The older idea of a “core” curriculum has evolved into a set of required common courses OR vertically organized general education programs, and/or required participation in a learning community.
These programs often combine broad themes with curricular and co-curricular options.
Diversity / Global Learning
Many institutions now offer courses and programs that help students explore cultures, life experiences, and global views that are different from their own.
Studies may address U.S. diversity, world cultures, or both; often exploring difficult differences (racial, ethnic, and gender inequality).
Intercultural studies are often augmented by experiential learning in the community and/or study abroad.
ePortfolios
ePortfolios enable students to electronically collect their work over time, reflect upon their personal and academic growth, and share selected items with others (professors, advisors, potential employers).
Personal websites provide students with space to reflect on their curricular and co-curricular experiences, curate evidence of skills and learning, and display their knowledge through various forms of media (presentations, documents, videos, images, etc.).
First Year Seminar & Experiences
These experiences bring small groups of students together with faculty/staff on a regular basis.
They emphasize critical inquiry, frequent writing, information literacy, collaborative learning, and skills that develop students’ intellectual and practical competencies.
They can also involve students wrangling with cutting-edge questions and learning about faculty research.
Internships
Internships are a common form of experiential learning.
They provide students with direct experience in a work setting related to their career interests along with the benefit of supervision and coaching from professionals in the field.
Learning Communities
Learning communities encourage integration across courses and encourage students to wrestle with big questions that matter beyond the classroom.
Students take 2 or more linked courses as a group and work closely together and with professors.
This may involve exploring a common topic and/or reading through different disciplines.
Bellevue College facilitates High-Impact Communities of Practice at RISE, which are collaborative groups of faculty who share a common interest or focus on specific educational approaches or subject areas.
Service Learning, Community Engaged Learning
In these programs, field-based “experiential learning” with community partners is an instructional strategy.
The main goal is to provide students with direct experience with issues they are studying and with efforts to analyze and solve real community problems, combined with reflection in courses.
The idea of giving back to the community as an important college outcome and working with community partners is good preparation for citizenship, work, and life.
Undergraduate Research
Many colleges and universities now provide research experiences for students in all disciplines.
Presently, Undergraduate Research is most prominent in the Sciences.
The goal is to involve students with actively contested questions, empirical observation, new technologies, and the excitement that comes from working to answer questions.
Writing-Intensive Courses
These courses emphasize writing at all levels and across the curriculum.
The effectiveness of this repeated practice across the curriculum has paralleled efforts in quantitative reasoning, information literacy, and other related areas.