High-Impact Practices
What are High-Impact Teaching Practices?
As defined by the Association of Academic Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), high-impact practices are a set of educational practices that “have been widely tested and have been shown to be beneficial for college students from many backgrounds.”
While high-impact practices benefit teaching and learning in many contexts and can take many forms, they are especially present in (excerpted from AAC&U’s High-Impact Educational Practices):
First-Year Seminars and Experiences
The highest-quality first-year experiences place a strong emphasis on critical inquiry, frequent writing, information literacy, collaborative learning, and other skills that develop students’ intellectual and practical competencies.
Common Intellectual Experiences
These programs often combine broad themes—e.g., technology and society, global interdependence—with a variety of curricular and co-curricular options for students.
Learning Communities
The key goals for learning communities are to encourage integration of learning across courses and to involve students with “big questions” that matter beyond the classroom. Students take two or more linked courses as a group and work closely with one another and with their professors. Many learning communities explore a common topic and/or common readings through the lenses of different disciplines. Some deliberately link “liberal arts” and “professional courses”; others feature service learning.
Writing-Intensive Courses
These courses emphasize writing at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum, including final-year projects. Students are encouraged to produce and revise various forms of writing for different audiences in different disciplines.
Collaborative Assignments and Projects
Collaborative learning combines two key goals: learning to work and solve problems in the company of others, and sharpening one’s own understanding by listening seriously to the insights of others, especially those with different backgrounds and life experiences.
Undergraduate Research
The goal is to involve students with actively contested questions, empirical observation, cutting-edge technologies, and the sense of excitement that comes from working to answer important questions.
Diversity/Global Learning
These studies—which may address U.S. diversity, world cultures, or both—often explore “difficult differences” such as racial, ethnic, and gender inequality, or continuing struggles around the globe for human rights, freedom, and power.
Service Learning, Community-Based Learning
The idea is to give students direct experience with issues they are studying in the curriculum and with ongoing efforts to analyze and solve problems in the community.
Internships
The idea is to provide students with direct experience in a work setting—usually related to their career interests—and to give them the benefit of supervision and coaching from professionals in the field.
Capstone Courses and Projects
The project might be a research paper, a performance, a portfolio of “best work,” or an exhibit of artwork. Capstones are offered both in departmental programs and, increasingly, in general education as well.
