Teaching Guides & Resources > Teaching Strategy & Pedagogy > High-Impact Practices

What Are High-Impact Practices?

High-impact practices are widely-tested pedagogical strategies that have been shown to improve student success and promote equity, including among historically underserved student populations. The director of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), George Kuh (2008), has found that high-impact practices (HIPs) benefit students in the following ways:

  • HIPs connect learning to life; their effectiveness stems from requiring students to devote their time and effort to purposeful tasks, and they help students understand and apply their classroom learning in different real-world settings.
  • HIPs foster high-quality interaction between faculty and students.
  • HIPs encourage students to experience diversity through contact with people who have different backgrounds and experiences.
  • HIPs provide students with frequent feedback (both informal and formal), which helps students improve their learning and strengthens the the relationship between students and faculty. 
  • HIPs help students understand themselves and also how they relate to others and to the world at large.

As part of the Reynolds Flight Path, the college is focusing on two specific high-impact practices that instructors can apply in their courses to improve student success, early momentum, retention, equity, and a sense of belonging: Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) and growth mindset. See below for more about these high-impact practices, and further resources on both TILT and growth mindset, including a TILTed assignment template, can be found in the Faculty Hub Canvas site.

Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) and Transparent Assignment Design (TAD)

TILT/TAD focuses on enhancing clarity and transparency in the design and delivery of assignments and activities in order to improve student engagement and success. Greater transparency can benefit all students, but it shows particular promise for promoting equity for underserved student populations and students in introductory, gateway courses who are adapting to college-level coursework, which connects with the Reynolds Flight Path goals. By incorporating TILT strategies, including well-defined and communicated assignment outcomes based on gained skills and/or knowledge, scaffolded approaches, clear evaluation rubrics, sample student work, and more, students will not only have a stronger sense of context and purpose of the coursework, but also multiple points of interaction and feedback with the instructor. These methods are also beneficial to instructors because they can streamline grading and assessment of student work, and provide clarity on whether student learning outcomes are being met.

Getting Started with TILT

The three main components of a “TILTed” assignment include being transparent about the purpose, task, and criteria. By explaining these three components of an assignment more clearly and effectively, instructors can help decrease student anxiety and confusion while increasing students’ ability to complete assignments successfully. While many instructors, especially in gateway math and English courses, will focus on TILTing two assignments, TILT strategies can be applied to make any form of communication more effective, including syllabi, email communications, college initiatives, committee tasks, etc.

Purpose:  The first step of TILT is to clearly explain the purpose of an assignment, connection to course learning objectives, and relevance to the real world. Learning Objectives: Define the learning objectives in language and terms that help students recognize how this assignment will benefit their learning. Real-World Relevance: Indicate how these learning objectives connect with institutional learning outcomes and how the specific knowledge and skills involved in this assignment will be important in students’ lives beyond the contexts of this assignment, this course, and this institution.

Task:  Clearly define what actions the students should take using Bloom’s Taxonomy action verbs. Then, list any guidelines or recommended sequence for students’ work, and specify any mistakes to be avoided. If there are pedagogical reasons for withholding info about how to do an assignment, protect students’ confidence and sense of belonging with a purpose statement: “The purpose of this assignment is for you to struggle and feel confused while you test your own approach for addressing the problem..."

Criteria:  Define characteristics of the finished product for an assignment. Provide multiple examples of what these characteristics look like in real-world practice and have students analyze multiple examples of real-world work before beginning the assignment. Discuss how excellent work differs from adequate work and provide students with a checklist of characteristics of successful work. Ask students to reflect on their completed, graded work to help them adjust their learning strategies to improve their future work ( which also promotes metacognition and a growth mindset ).

TILT Resources:  Find additional resources and example assignments and templates for TILT, and more on transparent assignment design. More TILT/TAD resources and research are also available, and instructors can access additional TILT resources and an example assignment template in the Faculty Hub and in Canvas course assignment templates.

Growth Mindset

Growth mindset is critical for students adapting to college-level coursework, specifically in gateway courses that comprise the foundation of their higher education trajectory. Students may be challenged for the first time with college-level work, or face moderate to severe anxiety over composition writing or math–in particular for students from underserved populations. By building metacognitive activities to encourage student self-reflection, various strategies for class preparation (reading guides, note-taking guides), opportunities for feedback without impact to grades, and other reflective activities into course content, students are empowered to understand and apply methods of learning that work best for them.

Growth Mindset Resources: Find resources and an overview of growth mindset in higher education from Inclusive Pedagogy, University of Colorado Denver and  MIT Teaching + Learning Lab, along with additional growth mindset resources and research.

Connection to the Reynolds Flight Path

TILT/TAD and growth mindset have been shown to promote equity and inclusion while closing achievement gaps experienced by students from underserved and minoritized populations (Canning et al.; Winkelmes et al.; Voorhees et al.; * see additional citations and research on TILT/TAD and growth mindset). These frameworks have also been shown to improve student success, early momentum, retention, and a sense of belonging, all of which are important goals of the Reynolds Flight Path.