Building Synergy For High Impact Educational Initiatives

Published in partnership with the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education First-year seminars and learning communities are two of the most commonly offered high-impact practices on U.S. campuses. The goals of these initiatives are similar: helping students make connections to faculty and other students, improving academic performance, and increasing persistence and graduation. As such, it is not surprising that many institutions choose to embed first-year seminars in learning communities. This volume explores the merger of these two high-impact practices. In particular, it offers insight into how institutions connect them and the impact of those combined structures on student learning and success. In addition to chapters highlighting strategies for designing, teaching in, and assessing combined programs, case studies offer practical insights into the structures of these programs in a variety of campus settings.

This volume offers the first comprehensive guide to how high-impact practices (HIPs) are being implemented in online environments and how they can be adjusted to meet the needs of online learners. This multi-disciplinary approach will assist faculty and administrators to effectively implement HIPs in distance education courses and online programs.With a chapter devoted to each of the eleven HIPs, this collection offers guidance that takes into account the differences between e-learners and traditional on-campus students.A primary goal of High-Impact Practices Online is to share the ways in which HIPs may need to be amended to meet the needs of online learners. Through specific examples and practical suggestions in each chapter, readers are introduced to concrete strategies for transitioning HIPs to the online environment that can be utilized across a range of disciplines and institution types. Each chapter of High-Impact Practices Online also references the most recent and relevant literature on each HIP so that readers are brought up to date on what makes online HIPs successful.The book provides guidance on how best to implement HIPs to increase retention and completion for online learners.

The Intersection of High-Impact Practices: What’s Next for Higher Education? examines high-impact practices and their impacts individually and collectively to demonstrate the added value of connecting high-impact practices. The research presented by Drs. Reilly and Turnbaugh-Langley illustrates that student success is not just a function of participation in one or many high-impact practices, but rather the order, timing, and interaction of these practices that yields the highest impact. These chapters discuss various high-impact practices such as study abroad experiences, student research initiatives, and internships to explore how these kinds of activities augment and enrich the success of students. The authors also speculate on where schools could increase the funding for these high-impact practices to maximize the institution’s return on investment. Ultimately, this book strongly advocates for not only the benefits of high-impact practices, but making sure students have multiple experiences with them.

When it was originally released, Thriving in Transitions: A Research-Based Approach to College Student Success represented a paradigm shift in the student success literature, moving the student success conversation beyond college completion to focus on student characteristics that promote high levels of academic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal performance in the college environment. The authors contend that a focus on remediating student characteristics or merely encouraging specific behaviors is inadequate to promote success in college and beyond. Drawing on research on college student thriving completed since 2012, the newly revised collection presents six research studies describing the characteristics that predict thriving in different groups of college students, including first-year students, transfer students, high-risk students, students of color, sophomores, and seniors, and offers recommendations for helping students thrive in college and life. New to this edition is a chapter focused on the role of faculty in supporting college student thriving.

An exploration of the University of South Carolina's trailblazing approach to the first-year experience As an innovative educational experiment, University 101 was designed to support students' transition to and success in college. Now, fifty years after its inception, the program continues to bring national recognition to the University of South Carolina. From Educational Experiment to Standard Bearer celebrates this milestone by exploring the course's origins; its evolution and success at the university; its impact on first-year students, upper-level students serving as peer leaders, faculty and staff instructors, and the university community and culture; and its role in launching the international first-year experience movement. By highlighting the most significant takeaways, lessons learned, and insights to practitioners on other campuses, this book will serve as an inspiration and road map for other institutions to invest in this proven concept and focus on the ingredients that lead to a successful program. John N. Gardner, founding director and architect of University 101, provides a foreword.

This book offers a roadmap for developing, growing, and sustaining living-learning communities (LLCs) that promote student success and enhance the undergraduate experience. Drawing on the Best Practices Model presented in Living-Learning Communities That Work, as well as updated research and rich, real-life examples from LLC administrators, the authors offer a revised and improved model for effective LLC practice. Nuanced typologies guide stakeholders in developing and growing their own programs, from the foundational, to the intermediate, and to the advanced level. This text features an extended section on the assessment of LLCs, complete with a logic model for integrating program assessment with student learning outcomes, and concludes with lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and a look into the future of LLCs in higher education. At a time when colleges and universities struggle to create community for students, this book will be a valuable resource to practitioners, researchers, and institutional leaders to more effectively allocate resources to create and sustain LLCs and to realize the potential of these communities to improve undergraduate education. For more information about ACUHO-I membership, events, and resources, please visit acuho-i.org.

This publication¿the latest report from AAC&U¿s Liberal Education and America¿s Promise (LEAP) initiative¿defines a set of educational practices that research has demonstrated have a significant impact on student success. Author George Kuh presents data from the National Survey of Student Engagement about these practices and explains why they benefit all students, but also seem to benefit underserved students even more than their more advantaged peers. The report also presents data that show definitively that underserved students are the least likely students, on average, to have access to these practices.

The perceived lack of understanding of cultural diversity in the American learning community has led instructors to challenge assumptions and stereotypes while addressing misconceptions. Teachers of foreign languages and cultural studies, in particular, feel the need to redesign curricula and lesson plans to better serve the learning community of the twenty-first century. The common starting point resides in the paradox that exists in today’s connected world; while global access to information makes learners aware of the infinite variety of cultural diversity, it does not, however, make them critical thinkers. For this reason, there is opportunity to reshape critical thinking within a more global perspective, while enhancing the tools to identify, interpret, and compare the different cultural models that learners encounter. The book demonstrates the theories and practical applications by which instructors use contemporary film to provide insightful readings on diverse local communities, communities that form the basis of global culture. This collection of essays will serve as a pedagogical tool and resource, offering methods and examples of a communicative approach to analyze and integrate cultural diversities, similarities, and problems in the second language curricula, methods that expose students to different cultural models while scaffolding their critical approach to multiple layers of common and specific values. This work will encourage a dialogue and long-lasting conversation on methodologies and teaching strategies rethought, reapplied, and remolded to the new learning environments.