Campus Connection

Faculty using high-impact practices share their strategies at CATL conference Aug. 28

A course called UWL 100 is helping to narrow achievement gaps at UW-La Crosse. Students of color or first-generation students who participate in the class their freshman year are more likely to return as sophomores than their peers in those groups who don’t take it. UWL 100, or First Year Student Seminar, encourages incoming students to consider how the college experience is an opportunity to become a more educated person, and the strategies and practices that will assist them in taking full advantage of it. UWL isn’t unique in having discovered the success of this college introductory class. It is one of many “high-impact practices” that colleges and universities have been using for more than a decade to increase student success outcomes. A little over a decade ago, researchers studying the National Survey of Student Engagement found that college students who reported involvement in “high-impact practices” were more likely to stay in school and graduate. On the list was a series of applied, hands-on experiences such as: studying abroad, conducting undergraduate research, collaborative learning and community-engaged learning. Since then, the concept has been heavily promoted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). These practices have caught on widely at colleges and universities across the country, including at UWL. UWL’s Strategic Plan calls for promoting the use of “high-impact practices” widely across campus. These educational practices can improve learning and potentially lead to successful outcomes for students from many backgrounds — especially for those from historically underrepresented backgrounds in postsecondary education. In the case of offering a first-year seminar as a high impact practice, the differences in retention rates at UWL were particularly pronounced for first generation students and students of color. First-generation students who took first-year seminar had an 85 percent retention rate compared to 75 percent for those who didn’t take the course. Students of color who took the first-year seminar had an 84 percent retention rate compared to 73 percent who didn’t take it. But simply incorporating a high-impact practice into teaching isn’t a silver bullet to better student outcomes. The key is knowing how to design and implement high-quality, high-impact practices, says Bill Cerbin, director of UWL’s Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning. During an upcoming Conference on Teaching and Learning at UWL, faculty who have succeeded in particular areas of implementing high-impact practices will share their strategies. The conference will be from 8 a.m.- noon Tuesday, Aug. 28, on the third floor of Centennial Hall. Learn more. UWL Breakout sessions will highlight faculty discussing five different high impact practices: community-engaged learning, undergraduate research, first-year experiences, collaborative assignments and projects and diversity experiences. See descriptions below. Through intentional program design and advanced pedagogy, these types of practices can enhance student learning and work to narrow gaps in achievement across student populations, according to the AAC&U.

breakout sessions:

Community-engaged learning

Mary Hamman, Economics, and expert in community-engaged learning, will explore the many challenges associated with involving students in meaningful and productive community-based projects. Right-Sizing Community-Based Projects to Fit your Course (and Save Your Sanity…) Community-based projects do not need to be semester-long behemoths, and in most courses they shouldn’t be. Effective engagements can last for as little as one class meeting. A shorter engagement or sequence of several short engagements allows students to reflect on performance in that project and carry learning on to the next task. This workshop will focus on identifying course content that would benefit most from community engagement and explore options for the structure and content of partnerships to fit your learning objectives and course schedule. The workshop will include practical discussions of logistical hurdles and trades offs between community engagement strategies to help instructors find the right fit for their courses.  

Undergraduate research

Scott Cooper, Biology professor and director of Undergraduate Research and Creativity, will help faculty plan ways to integrate undergraduate research in multiple courses across their departmental curriculum. In this way, academic programs can provide more students with high-quality research experiences and develop students research skills more effectively. Course-Embedded Research Across the Curriculum Undergraduate research is a form of experiential learning, where students use the tools of their discipline to solve real problems or create novel works. About a third of UWL students do independent research projects and most report engaging in course-embedded research projects. However, the integration of these experiences across the curriculum can be variable within a department. This workshop will help departments learn how to integrate undergraduate research in multiple courses across their curriculum through a two-step backward design process. The first step is to identify the components of scholarship students should know by the time they graduate and which courses to integrate each component into. The second step is to use backward design to integrate these components into each individual course. This workshop will be most effective if a group of faculty from a department attend together.  

Collaborative assignments and projects

Lindsay Steiner, English, works with faculty to overcome problems students experience in working on collaborative projects such as unequal commitment, poor delegation, ineffective co-authoring and a lack of professionalism. Steiner and Bryan Kopp, English, will co-present this session. Troubleshooting Collaborative Assignments: Helping Students Work in Teams More Effectively Collaborative assignments are considered a high-impact learning practice because students learn to solve problems in teams and engage with diverse perspectives. Assigning group projects can help students develop project management and interpersonal skills. However, students often encounter pitfalls when trying to do group work, including unequal commitment, poor delegation, ineffective co-authoring and a lack of professionalism. Instructors may also struggle with team-based projects—specifically how to improve student motivation, ensure equitable contributions and assign individual grades. This session will provide strategies and solutions to address common problems with collaborative assignments. Participants will need to bring a draft or copy of a collaborative assignment that they plan to use in fall or spring semester. During the session, participants will share their experiences with collaborative assignments, discuss their assignments and explore ways to improve them based on best practices.  

Diversity experiences

Deb Hoskins, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Vice Chancellor Barbara Stewart, Diversity and Inclusion, will focus on how instructors can improve diversity-related dialogue in their courses. They help instructors develop tools to respond to diversity-related classroom incidents, in the moment, in the aftermath and in anticipation. High-Impact Diversity Experiences: Quality Dialogue Diversity courses are one of George Kuh’s “high-impact practices” (HIPs), so-called because they tend to benefit historically-underserved students even more than majority group students. UWL requires one such course for General Education, and many instructors address diversity issues in a broad range of courses. Despite Kuh’s research indicating diversity courses as a HIP, research also tells us that students of color in particular may not experience these courses positively, which can undermine their willingness to engage fully with the materials of the course. Add to those issues the fact that some of us are ourselves the best-known face of diversity that some of our students have ever had. Classroom activities that involve dialogue around diversity issues can thus produce a range of emotional responses that instructors struggle to handle productively. This session will focus on improving diversity-related dialogue in the context of a course, one crucial factor that makes these topics effective as learning experiences.  

First-year experiences

Tim Dale, Political Science and Public Administration and Coordinator of UWL 100, provides a research-based overview of the benefits of first-year seminars, why they work and how to teach them. What's the Deal with First-Year Seminars? Our General Education curriculum is about to change significantly with the addition of a required first-year seminar. This session will provide a research-based overview of the benefits of first-year seminars, why they work and how to teach them. We will also discuss best practices in developing content for first-year seminars and how to choose good topics. The session will be useful beyond considering first-year seminars, as understanding how and why first-year seminars work also helps us understand how to make instruction for first year students better across our courses. This session is particularly designed for people who want to learn more about this new General Education course and who are considering developing a first-year seminar to offer in the future.  

What makes something a high-impact practice:

Demands considerable time and effort Facilitates learning outside the classroom Requires meaningful interactions with faculty Encourages collaboration with diverse others Provides frequent and substantive feedback to the student -NSSE survey