High-impact Practices Research Articles

Fostering Student Engagement and Success in STEM Education: An AI-Driven Exploration of High Impact Practices from Cross-Disciplinary General Education Courses

Due to the increase in data and software tools, the need for programmers and data analysts has risen in the United States during the 21st century. As a result, more students are enrolling in Computer Science, Information Technology, and Data Science programs nationwide. However, switching to online and blended learning and using cyberlearning tools have presented new challenges for student learning, retention, and program success. One way to overcome these challenges and improve student achievement is to implement evidence-based pedagogical strategies and innovative technologies within clear theoretical frameworks. Recent studies have shown that various Learning Engagement Strategies (LESs) in STEM education, such as gamification, active learning, feedback and assessment, and interactive multimedia, significantly increase student engagement and course completion rates. High-Impact Practices (HIPs), identified as crucial by Kuh in 2008, have become powerful tools for enhancing student involvement, retention, and completion in higher education. This article explores practices that can enhance student learning and success that have many benefits, including more robust relationships between students and faculty, cooperative learning, quick feedback, inclusive environments, and conflict resolution. The study uses NLP-based text analytics to investigate the application and impact of these High-Impact Practices (HIPs) across different disciplines. Firstly, it identifies the most prevalent HIPs in various General Education (Gen Ed) disciplines that impact student success. Secondly, it formulates AIdriven recommendations for cultivating a student-centric learning environment through HIPs within STEM education. The results of empirical analyses using course materials, survey data, syllabi, and pre/post-workshop surveys sourced from around 65 Gen Ed course at a small public university provides valuable insights into successful HIPs for STEM courses that can help instructors improve their online and blended course designs. By implementing these practices, educators can increase student engagement, retention, and completion rates across diverse student populations in Gen Ed STEM courses. Keywords— High-Impact Practices; General Education, STEM education; Natural Language Processing.

"A Life Altering and Special Journey": The Lasting Impact of Mindfulness on Semester-long Study Abroad Participants

Education abroad is held up as a high-impact practice with the potential to engage college and university students in a transformative learning experience (Kuh, 2008). The Institute for International Education (IIE) reports that 347,099 U.S. students received academic credit for study abroad during the 2018-2019 academic school year (IIE). Extensive research into student learning gains abroad have demonstrated that developing student metacognition, or one’s ability to be intentionally self-reflective, is central to transformative learning in the study abroad experience (Vande Berg et al., 2012; Zull, 2012). Consequently, international educators are continually searching for pedagogies (praxis) to facilitate metacognitive learning within study abroad programs. The burgeoning discipline of contemplative pedagogy (Bai et al., 2009; Zajonc, 2013) provides such a praxis for metacognitive learning. Yet the research on the use of contemplative pedagogy within the context of study abroad is still in a nascent stage (Clancy, 2020). In this paper, we present an exploratory case study of contemplative pedagogy and mindfulness practice on a semester-long study abroad program and, namely, its potential long-term impact on student participants. Analysis of questionnaires, answered on a voluntary and anonymous basis, 18 months after the return to the home campus, reveals that students continue to use those practices: Students report sustained attentiveness to surroundings, in the present moment, greater self-awareness, improved connection to those in their communities, and a heightened remembrance. We conclude that contemplative pedagogy, associated with student metacognition, was a successful intercultural praxis within the exploratory case study, and may potentiate long-term effects in participants.

Broadening participation in STEM through equity-minded high-impact practices: a multimodal systematic review

High-impact practices (HIPs), such as undergraduate research, first-year seminars, and learning communities, have been shown to generally advance college student success. However, there are often disparities in access, participation, and outcomes between white and racially/ethnically minoritized students. While scholars have critiqued HIPs and provided alternative approaches to better serve minoritized students, we know little about how federally funded programs aiming to broaden participation can serve as a mechanism advance equity. Drawing on the literature, we developed an equity-minded HIP framework to critically examine the prominence and characteristics of 38 programs aiming to broaden participation in undergraduate US STEM education funded by the National Science Foundation. We conducted a systematic examination of multimodal data from the STEM for All Multiplex repository. Findings reveal most programs included only one to two HIPs, with undergraduate research being most prominent followed by internships. Most programs included only a few elements of equity-minded design, such as providing students additional resources and faculty training, and implemented HIPs to include peer and faculty interactions. Last, most programs utilized cognitive, psychosocial, or sociocultural measures to assess the benefits to students. Only a few measured equity-mined outcomes pertaining to institutional change such as policies, resources, and practices. We highlight two exemplar programs and offer recommendations for researchers and funders to more effectively implement equity-minded HIPs to broaden participation in undergraduate STEM education.

Corrigendum: Carrasco M et al., Assessing Use, Usefulness, and Application of the High Impact Practices in Family Planning Briefs and Strategic Planning Guides.

Corrigendum: Carrasco M et al., Assessing Use, Usefulness, and Application of the High Impact Practices in Family Planning Briefs and Strategic Planning Guides.

Towards a Social Realist Framework for Analyzing Academic Advising in Global South Contexts

Academic advising is a proven high-impact practice, shown to have the potential to help increase students’ prospects of academic success, increase their sense of belonging and integration at their institution of higher learning, and provide unique insights into the lived realities and experiences of higher education students. For this reason, advising can be seen as a transformative activity within the student support space in South African higher education institutions. As a practice and profession, advising has existed in the Global North (GN) for decades. However, in South Africa – a developing country in the Global South (GS) – academic advising remains a nascent field. Consequently, the overarching ideas that inform academic advising in the South African context (both theoretically and practically), tend to be drawn predominantly from the GN and more developed countries. The unchallenged acceptance and tacit dominance of theoretical perspectives and practices from these countries can be considered problematic.

Evaluating differences in community-engaged learning and service-learning via the context, input, process, and product model

Service-learning (SL) and community-engaged learning (CEL) are high-impact practices whose ideological foundations are built upon ideas pioneered by philosophers such as John Dewey and William James. Given that one methodology (CEL) directly branched from the other (SL), these practices are expected to have fundamental underpinnings that differentially influence how projects within these practices are carried out. Stufflebeam and Shinkfield’s Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) model for evaluation was applied to assess these two high-impact practices. This narrative review has two goals: (1) discuss the usage of the CIPP model to evaluate established SL and CEL projects, and (2) assess any differences in evaluation garnered from CIPP model usage that may have stemmed from nuances in SL and CEL ideology. Literature covering either practice had shown, in some cases, to be inconsistent with how the implementation and guiding principles of such projects matched the terminology used by project organizers. This discrepancy has implications for how these projects are carried out and evaluated in the future.

Student Stories of Campus Sport Experiences

Engaged learning practices foster “meaningful learning experiences” in support of students’ lifelong learning and contributions to their workplaces and communities (Moore, 2021, p. 17). This article highlights how Moore’s six engaged learning practices are used in an undergraduate sport and education course focusing on the purposes of sports and place in their college going experiences. Using open pedagogy and digital scholarship practices, student stories focus on campus-based sport including the built environment (e.g., skateboarding, parkour), esports and board games, recreational student clubs in the natural environment (on campus and off; e.g., hiking, biking, snow sports), intramural and club sports, and as athletes in traditional varsity sports. This class utilizes several aspects of Kuh’s High-Impact Practices and Moore’s Engaging Learning Practices in which students collaborate in group writing projects to develop stories using the Pressbooks platform. Using open pedagogy practices to support students, the Pressbook chapters illustrate the influence of sport and place in the college-going experience and campus life from the student perspective (Kuh, 2008; Moore, 2021). This article also describes the faculty/library staff collaboration to integrate Pressbooks as a digital tool to foster engaged learning. As a result, students create an open access digital edition that gives students control over how their content can be shared and distributed as content creators and subjects of sports on a college campus.

Building a Faculty-Led Study Abroad Program with Backward Design

Research has shown that high impact practices improve the quality of student learning, experience, retention, and academic success, particularly for underserved students. The teaching and learning practices that have been extensively tested and have been shown to be beneficial for college students include study abroad and field-based service-learning projects. In Summer 2019, a group of four undergraduate pre-service teachers at a Hispanic-serving university from the United States participated in a 10-day faculty-led Taiwan Study Abroad Program. One of the components of the program was a service-learning project – a 2-1/2-day English Language Camp in a Taiwanese elementary school. Using this study abroad program as a model, this article discusses how to develop and implement a program with the end in mind, including the respective academic preparation including the pre-travel, on-site, and post-travel assignments. The backward design framework provides instructors a planning structure and process to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction.

Combining High-Impact Practices to Facilitate Hope for Young Adults Transitioning into College

Combining High-Impact Practices to Facilitate Hope for Young Adults Transitioning into College

The link between high-impact practices and college success among international students in the U.S.

The link between high-impact practices and college success among international students in the U.S.

The Impact and Challenges of the Implementation of a High-Impact ePortfolio Practice on Graduate Students’ Learning Experiences

This study examined the impact of implementing a high-impact ePortfolio practice on graduate students’ learning experiences and the challenges they faced during the first year of an e-learning graduate program. The study employed a phenomenological approach to explore the participants' experiences in this innovative learning environment. Qualitative data were collected from 25 participants and analyzed using thematic analysis. Two main themes were identified: the impact and the challenges, and seven sub-themes emerged. This study found that the implementation of ePortfolios as high-impact practice (HIP) has a positive impact on students. The impact includes the development of students' skills, their sense of achievement, the ability to showcase their work, and making sense of their learning. However, the study also revealed the challenges students faced during the implementation process, which included the need for additional support, issues related to workload, and difficulties in writing up their reflections. The findings suggest that implementing ePortfolios as HIP has more positive impact on the students’ sense of achievement and pride and enhances different skills. While the integration of ePortfolios has a significant impact for students, additional support and resources are necessary to address the associated challenges. Overall, this study has important implications for educators and institutions seeking to implement high-impact ePortfolio practices and highlights the need for continued research in this area.

Moving policy to practice: role of advocacy in enabling provision of injectable contraceptives by pharmacists in Kenya.

Expanding access to contraceptive services by making them available in pharmacies and drug shops is a family planning high-impact practice. In 2018, Kenya's Ministry of Health amended its family planning guidelines to allow pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists throughout the country to provide subcutaneous and intramuscular depot medroxyprogesterone acetate. Amending the policy did not necessarily mean that the policy would be implemented. The Advance Family Planning project launched an advocacy campaign to engage key stakeholders to work with the Ministry of Health to implement the policy. Consequently, a family planning training package for pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists was developed and rolled out. The advocacy process also led to strengthening family planning reporting by the trained pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists. To further enhance sustainability by ensuring a continuous pool of pharmacy professionals equipped with skills to provide family planning services, Advance Family Planning and its partners advocated with universities and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board to revise the pre-service training curriculum to include family planning as a competence area for pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists. A key lesson learned is that policy formulation does not necessarily translate to policy implementation. Advocacy is often needed to move policy to practice, especially where resources are required. Policy implementation also requires incremental achievement of milestones and the need for advocacy for each step in the process. Implementation of the policy provision that allows pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists to provide injectable contraceptives has implications beyond family planning programs. It provides a point of reference for allowing pharmacists to offer other primary health care services, such as immunization, injectable HIV prophylaxis, and other interventions that might not be provided for in policy.

STEM Summer Camp for Girls Positively Affects Self-Efficacy

Women and racially and ethnically minoritized populations are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Out-of-school time programs like summer camps can provide positive science experiences that may increase self-efficacy and awareness of STEM opportunities. Such programs often use the same high-impact practices used in K–12 classrooms including relating concepts to real-world examples, engaging students as active participants in inquiry-driven projects, and facilitating learning in a cooperative context. They additionally provide opportunities for engaging in STEM without fear of failure, offer a community of mentors, and allow families to become more involved. We designed a summer camp for middle schoolers who identified as girls, low-income, and as a minoritized race or ethnicity. We describe the design of the camp as well as the results from a simple pre- and post-camp questionnaire that examined each camper’s relationship to science, scientific self-efficacy, and interest in having a job in STEM. We found an increase in self-efficacy in camp participants, which is important because high scientific self-efficacy predicts student performance and persistence in STEM, especially for girls. We did not detect an increase in interest in pursuing a STEM job, likely because of already high values for this question on the pre-camp survey. We add to the growing body of work recognizing the potential of out-of-school time STEM programs to increase scientific self-efficacy for girls and racially minoritized students. Tweet: Summer camp for minoritized middle-school girls increases scientific self-efficacy, a characteristic that may be important for removing barriers to participation in STEM.

Humanities Pedagogy in a Pandemic Context: Maintaining High-impact Practices in Virtual Classrooms

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruption of post-secondary education turned future planning for online courses into an immediate reality. Given the in-person limitations, courses centred on experiential learning (EL) opportunities were challenging to offer without their curricula undergoing extensive reconsideration. This article highlights how two Italian Studies courses at the University of Toronto (U of T) and University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), known for their in-person EL opportunities and study abroad, were able to provide highly interactive, global learning spaces online through the deployment of digital technologies and inclusion of redesigned high-impact practices (HIPs). What emerged from these new virtual spaces and adjacent components (e.g. virtual lectures, tours, workshops, assessments) were models for the preservation of academic integrity, frequent peer-to-peer interaction, and innovative ways to put learners into direct contact with Italian culture. Drawing from these successes and from current scholarship in teaching and learning, the courses at the centre of this article – Modern Italian Culture (ITA358/9Y0, U of T) and Italian Culture through Food (ITA235H5, UTM) – are presented as case studies which champion the inclusion of digital learning tools, open access and virtual opportunities across humanities curricula, regardless of delivery mode.

Experiential Learning Practices and Career Courses: Predictors of First Destination Outcomes

This study examined connections between experiential learning practices, mandatory career courses, and positive first destination outcomes of graduates from a large public institution prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rising cost of education and competition among universities has led to consumer demands for information pertaining to their return on investment. Universities have been encouraged to provide first-destination outcomes for graduates as a way to show the value of their degree programs. To strengthen these outcomes, many programs encourage or mandate experiential learning known as high-impact practices (HIPs) and career courses to prepare emerging adult learners for the transition to employment or further education. However, little is known as to the impact these practices have on the first-destination outcomes of these graduating students. This study identified specific experiential practices which proved beneficial to securing employment or acceptance to continued education, with an important caveat that career courses added only limited benefit for some respondents. These findings will better inform the allocation of university teaching resources and are a basis for further study of career practices in higher education.

Promoting educational equity among health science students through a project-based learning writing course at a Hispanic Serving Institution

Background: Overall, high rates of American high school seniors lack writing proficiency (75%) and historically underrepresented minority (URM) populations fare even worse (91% of African American, 89% of Latinx) (U.S. Dept of Education, 2011), which suggests that URM college students enter college with lower writing abilities (Bracco et al., 2021). Co-curricular writing instruction could help eliminate writing skill disparities. The Health Science Intensive Writing Workshop (HSIWW) aimed to increase students’ perceived confidence in their writing abilities, encourage and increase academic help-seeking behaviors and networking skills.
 Description of Practice: A project-based learning methodology proved the best fit because of its focus on real-world problems and assessments, and emphasis on collaboration and revisions of personal work. 
 Outcomes: Eight upper-division health science undergraduate students participated in the 5-day HSIWW. Descriptive statistics indicated increases in perceived ability, confidence in writing abilities, and academic help-seeking behaviors. 
 Conclusion: To the study team’s knowledge, the HSIWW was unique as a co-curricular, project-based course that used high-impact practices to teach public health writing skills to URM students in higher education. HSIWW’s findings suggest a positive impact on student achievement by improving student performance and scaffolding the academic help-seeking behaviors that help keep students on the path to graduation.

Institutionalizing Community-Based Research

Institutionalizing Community-Based Research

Integrating learning support: the relationship between first-year seminar enrollment and student success in developmental mathematics

ABSTRACT Nearly half of all students in the United States are placed into at least one developmental course in college. Many of these students fail to complete developmental course sequences and persist to degree completion. First-Year Seminars are one of several high-impact practices associated with increased persistence, retention, and graduation rates of college students. Inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) was used to explore the effect of concurrent first-year seminar enrolment on the academic achievement of students placed into developmental mathematics. Study results indicated that students who self-selected into a first-year seminar were more likely to earn a passing grade in their developmental mathematics course and have higher overall GPA. These results may inform strategies for integrating learning support with instruction for academically underprepared college students.

Modifying Summer Undergraduate Research Programs during COVID-19 Increased Graduate School Intentions but Exacerbated Anxieties.

COVID-19 created unprecedented challenges for college students, highlighting the need to provide educational contexts that foster well-being. Summer undergraduate research experiences (SUREs) constitute a high-impact practice, yet little systematic knowledge exists about how the first surge of COVID-19 influenced undergraduate researchers' well-being. This knowledge is important for preparing for future disruptions. This study applies the student well-being model (SWBM) to examine how SURE status (e.g., modification vs. cancellation) impacted students' mental health and graduate school intentions using primary survey data collected from U.S. undergraduate researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in Summer 2020 (n = 408, from 131 institutions). Just under half had their SURE canceled, and the others engaged in modified SUREs. Students whose SUREs were canceled had reduced anxiety severity (p < 0.05), but greater concerns about graduate school matriculation (p < 0.001), compared with students with modified SUREs. Results suggest that modified SUREs are a reasonable path forward under conditions where in-person contact is untenable. Results point toward potential improvements in higher education practices that may enhance student well-being following disruptive events. Program directors can address potential causes of anxiety in modified SUREs, advocate for student-centered adjustments to graduate admission processes, and use experiences during COVID-19 as a springboard to broaden participation in undergraduate research.

Impactful social entrepreneurship education: A US-Spanish service learning collaborative online international learning (COIL) project

Social Entrepreneurship Education (SEE) is becoming ubiquitous across geographical and institutional contexts. Although service learning (SL) and global learning (GL) are high-impact practices frequently used in SEE, the implementation of SL Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) in this context is less explored. This study borrows from the literature on SE competencies, SL and GL to address this gap by critically describing a US-Spain seven-week SL COIL project, and, through an exploratory multi-sourced qualitative "researcher-participants" study, generating findings related to the effect of this pedagogical tool on the students' competencies. Mixed teams of students had to solve a challenge posed by four social enterprises in the US and Spain. The findings confirm increased personal, social, and cognitive skills, reinforcing the relevance of this pedagogy to increasing intercultural competencies, and reducing the inequities of traditional study-abroad experiences. As an exploratory study, it is limited in its scope, but it provides the foundation for further research into COIL practices in SEE.