High-impact Practices

Overview

The American Association of Colleges and Universities along with other national education organizations have worked to identify strategies that best support student success. These evidence-based practices are called “high-impact practices” (HIPs) for their benefits to students, particularly those who have historically been marginalized and underrepresented. The high-impact practices currently fostered at ACC include:

• Internships: Carefully designed and monitored educational experiences that provide students the opportunity to integrate academic knowledge with practical work experience in a professional setting. They are supervised, mentored, and evaluated experiences that help students test interests, develop new skills and learn first-hand about the workplace in their field of study. Internships may be paid or unpaid.
• Workforce co-ops and practicums: These are identical, but cooperatives have an added requirement of weekly lectures.
• Service learning and community-based learning: A form of experiential learning that integrates community service into the curricular objectives of an academic course. Students work directly with local organizations to benefit their cause while gaining a better understanding of how the content they learn in a class at ACC can be used to generate real-world change.
• Study abroad: An educational opportunity for students to experience the culture and history of a foreign country, while meeting their ACC course or program of study learning outcomes. Most ACC study abroad programs are offered in the summer semester and all are faculty-led. There are currently 10 study abroad programs with learning and travel opportunities in Latin America, Asia, and Europe.

Accomplishments

• Internships generally serve as capstones in their respective degree plans and have restricted enrollment contingent on department chair approval.
• Service learning sections include all sections tagged SVL or in the process of being tagged. The tagging process commenced in fall 2022. Instructors of SVL tagged sections are certified, and SVL projects adhere to agreed faculty standards. The following is participation data for spring 2023:

• Students
  • Internships (INT, PRA, COO): 381
  • Service learning: 631

• Sections
  • Internships: 37
  • Practicum: 14
  • Co-op: 8
  • Service learning: 30

Impact

Research is clear that high-impact practices deepen learning, broaden student-faculty interactions, help students build their employable skills, and connect students to their intended careers. The greater student engagement with learning that comes from participating in high-impact practices contributes to persistence and success for students.

Next Steps

ePortfolios for students: Planning to develop a proposal for development and implementation.

• A faculty interest group (FIG) will read articles and discuss different uses and approaches to portfolios and make recommendations for developing and implementing. Tentative topics include:
  • Education vs. professional use
  • Portfolio assessment
  • Digital portfolio tools
  • Different subject area approaches

Internships

• The internship programs, student evaluations, and employer relations will start stressing the NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) career readiness competencies this fall semester.
• We are also exploring international internship possibilities, both remote and in-person.
• The internship website is being enhanced with additional resources and videos.

Service learning, community-based learning

• Fall 2023 semester will include a large discussion event with Interfaith Action of Central Texas with numerous ACC classes focused on this topic: Book Banning and Parental Rights.
• A Service Learning Showcase will be held near the end of the fall semester to allow students to present their work and further promote service learning as a high-impact practice.
• A Summer Institute is planned for June to train and certify additional faculty to teach service learning classes and develop SL projects.
• Starting in the fall, service learning projects will incorporate NACE career readiness competencies.
• The service learning website is being updated to include detailed archives of existing projects, photos of projects and events, lists of community partners, articles of best practices, etc.