Eight Elements of High-Impact Practices – An Overview

This is the first in a series of posts focusing on how to incorporate elements of high-impact practices (HIPs) into your courses.

One of the most exciting parts of our strategic plan, at least to us pedagogy nerds in CETLOE, is Georgia State University’s commitment to integrating and expanding high-impact practices (HIPs) in core courses. HIPs are teaching and learning practices that have been shown to offer “significant educational benefits for students who participate in them – including and especially those from demographic groups historically underserved by higher education” (AAC&U). Figure 1 below offers a typology of HIPs, ranging from practices that could be implemented by intrepid individual faculty to others that require more extensive collaboration.

This image categorizes High-Impact Practices (HIPs) into three levels based on the coordination required for their implementation. The first category, labeled “Course Contained,” can be seamlessly added to existing courses without external coordination. These practices, such as collaborative assignments and projects, writing-intensive courses, global learning courses, e-portfolios, place-based learning, and undergraduate research, are ideal for instructors who are new to integrating HIPs into their teaching, especially the first three. These established models provide a straightforward entry point for faculty aiming to enhance student engagement within the scope of their existing course structures. The second category, referred to as “Specialized Implementation", involves practices that require more deliberate coordination with departmental goals, program-level outcomes, or external partners. Examples include work-based learning and internships, service-learning or community-based learning, and capstone courses and projects. These HIPs are designed to align with broader learning objectives and often extend beyond the boundaries of a single course, requiring collaboration and strategic planning. The third category, “Institutional Initiatives,” encompasses practices that demand university, college, or department-wide coordination to implement effectively. These initiatives, such as common intellectual experiences, first-year experience courses, and learning communities, often address complex, large-scale challenges. These efforts require significant institutional commitment and collaboration to ensure successful integration and sustainability. — Figure 1. HIPs Typology

You might be thinking, “My students collaborate on projects, including research projects. Am I already integrating HIPs?” Good question. It depends. The OG HIPs guru, George Kuh (2013), explained that, to ensure that implementation quality is high enough to achieve the desired outcomes – improved persistence, learning outcomes, graduation rates, etc. – certain conditions need to be met to set the right challenges, establish meaningful connections, and sustain the appropriate depth of engagement. Accordingly, he outlined the following elements of HIPS:

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

This might make you wonder, “Do I need to do all of these things to count what I’m doing as a HIP? That seems like a lot.” That’s another good question, and there’s certainly some highly productive quibbling among CETLOE types regarding baseline HIP-worthiness, levels of HIPs, and whatnot. However, for now, since this is just an overview, we’ll spare you that debate and just say that, for our purposes, if you want to elevate your practice to HIP level, at a minimum, you need to incorporate #1 and #2 as well as one additional element. In other words, once you incorporate at least three elements, two of which are #1 and #2, you've got a HIP course on your hands.

A visual checklist titled “Do I Have A HIP Class?” with two sections: Required Elements and Additional Elements. Required Elements include two items: 1. Performance expectations set at appropriately high levels. 2. Significant investment of time and efforts by students over an extended period of time. Additional Elements include six items: 1. Interaction with faculty and peers about substantive matters. 2. Experiences with diversity. 3. Frequent, timely, and constructive feedback. 4. Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning. 5. Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications. 6. Public demonstration of competence. At the bottom, a note states: “If you’re able to select both boxes in the REQUIRED ELEMENTS section and at least one box in the ADDITIONAL ELEMENTS section, congratulations, you’ve got a HIP course. — Figure 2. HIP Elements Checklist

Now that we’ve covered the basics, to help think through how to actually integrate these practices into your courses, whether in the context of HIPs or not, we thought it’d be a good idea to unpack each element in its own post. So, over the next few months, in a series we’re very descriptively calling “Eight Elements of High-Impact Practices”, we’ll be exploring each element in more detail. Each post will offer practical tips and resources to help integrate these practices into your course design and delivery, including the use of “Small Teaching” strategies, effective use of iCollege, and possible uses of generative AI. If that sounds like fun to you, we hope that you’ll check out the next post in the series, “Setting and Maintaining High Expectations,” coming soon! In the meantime, stay tuned for news from our strategic HIPs initiative and, if you want more personalized suggestions regarding how to integrate HIPs into your courses and programs, set up a “Teaching Mentor Meeting” to talk to a CETLOE HIPs expert.

Works Cited

AAC&U. (n.d.). Trending Topic: High-impact educational practices: Association of American Colleges & Universities. https://www.aacu.org/trending-topics/high-impact. (Accessed January 22, 2025).

Kuh, G.D., O’Donnell, K., & Reed, S. (2013). Ensuring Quality and Taking High Impact Practices to Scale. Association of American Colleges & Universities. https://www.aacu.org/publication/ensuring-quality-and-taking-high-impact-practices-to-scale