Intercollegiate Athletics Experience as a High Impact Practice: Examination of Quality Indicators

Abstract

Intercollegiate student-athletes have lower access and participation rates compared to peers across the high-impact practices (HIPs). HIPs are an active learning practice that deepen learning through engagement. Recently, there has been a call to look at student experiences to identify ‘next-generation’ HIPs. The intercollegiate athletic experience shows lasting transformative benefits for participants and thus constitutes a ‘next-generation’ HIP. This paper provides evidence to support the concept of intercollegiate athletics as a HIP by: 1) presenting data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE) in support of athletics as a HIP; 2) share the perceptions of academic personnel in a mid-major Division I conference considering intercollegiate athletics as a fit for a next-generation HIP; and 3) utilizing the quality indicators of HIPs as a way to assess the athletic experience by student-athletes. In total these perspectives indicated that eight key quality elements of HIPs are part of a student’s athletics experience. Additional discussion includes the importance of integrating intentional feedback, reflection, and connection to real-world application to further align and deepen the athlete experience with quality measures of HIPs.