High Impact Practices: An Annotated Bibliography

EDAC 631 Annotated Bibliography

Nick Capozzoli

Claire Maxson

LaKrisha Perry

High Impact Practices: An Annotated Bibliography

Bonet, G., & Walters, B. R. (2016, June 1). High Impact Practices: Student Engagement and

Retention. College Student Journal, 224-235.

This article discusses a specific program started in 1996 at Kingsborough Community College that they called “learning communities”. The intent was to take small cohorts of students at one to two semester periods and test their retention of knowledge in courses such as basic English, introductory Physchology and Sociology and a one hour student development seminar. They have provdied data as well as a stufdent survey to detail the successfulness of these programs over the past 20 years. They also list their research goals and breakdown the 5 key hypothesis that were developed from their studies. Using these examples would be useful in forming new hypthosis or even ones specific to a department or institution.

Building on the Tennessee Promise. (Aug 18 2016) Community College Daily. American Association of Community Colleges ProQuest. Retrieved Sept. 8 2016 from, http://search.proquest.com.allstate.libproxy.ivytech.edu/pqrl/docview/1812335177/fulltext/E92725A83F064A1BPQ/1?accountid=40920

The Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) has awarded $800,000 in grants to five community colleges across the country to build high impact practices on their campuses.  One of these practices is intrusive advising while another is first-year seminar courses. The following point connects with future research, “For example, Cleveland State Community College, which received Tennessee Promise Forward funding in the first year, retained Tennessee Promise students at a rate that was 9 percentage points higher than the overall population through its case management approach to student advising.” The college's work with first-year seminars incoming students yielded an increase from 31 percent to 60 percent of students completing college level writing, according to THEC. This could be used in connection to building a case to keep first-year seminar courses and infusing the first semester specifically with intrusive advising.

Gagliardi, J. S., Martin, R. R., Wise, K., & Blaich, C. (2015). The System Effect: Scaling High-Impact Practices Across Campuses. New Directions For Higher Education, 2015(169), 15-26. doi:10.1002/he.20119

This article focuses on strengthening bonds between post-secondary facilities and consortia to work with the Council on Undergraduate Research. The desire is to increase the effectiveness of the educational facilities and consortia to generate student engagement. Thus, consortia and educational facilities are focusing on high-impact practices with the output of undergraduate research. Student engagement is vital when looking at retention and growth opportunities for students; the article provides insight to an option to engage and retain students. 

Hill, L. Maier-Katkin., & Kinsley, K. (2015). Everything Old is New Again: The Criminology/Criminal Justine Freshman Research Seminar. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 26(4), 493-506. doi:10.1080/10511253.2015.1052002 

A first-year seminar with traditional objectives of study skills, research basics, critical thinking has been infused with contextualized curriculum of criminal justice. While this is not one of the areas Ivy Tech Community College has a select course, criminal justice is under the broader public service course, this would be great to use going forward in tracking the success of this type of major specific coursework.  The study did find that this approach had a positive impact on the students, their skills and comfort level in the topics at hand moving forward in their studies.  The course encourages critical thinking and has a positive influence on the students.  The problem with this in terms of a study is that these are all basic student success objectives.  There is nothing to say that criminal justice being incorporated into the course has had an impact on success or retention.  So this could be used as base research for continuing or implementing contextualized curriculum.

Kilgo, C., Ezell Sheets, J., & Pascarella, E. (2015). The link between high-impact practices and student learning: some longitudinal evidence. Higher Education, 69(4), 509-525. doi:10.1007/s10734-014-9788-z

This article reviews different high-impact practices used in post-secondary education. The article identifies certain high-impact practices that provide high ranking liberal arts educational outcomes which result in positive student experiences. Determining which high-impact practices make a difference in the early stages of the undergraduate experience serves as an important aspect of long-term student success. This article could prove useful in designing first and second year experiences as well as learning communities.

Kuh, G. D. (2008, September 22). Why Integration and Engagement are Essential to Effective Educational Practice in the Twenty-first Century. Peer review: emerging trends and key debates in undergraduate education, 10(4), 27-28.

Kuh discusses six processes of high impact practices that engage first year students. First is the devotion of time to a purposeful task, second is the demand to interact with faculty and other students about substantial matters. Third is the experience of diversity through interacting with people who appear different than themselves. Fourth is the opportunity for frequent feedback in their opportunities, fifth is the opportunity to see how learning works on and off campus and finally sixth is the deep learning they participate in that helps them put their learning into context of a broader perspective. High impact practices are found throughout a educational journey but the more entrenched they become in a college’s culture the more engaging and effective they become.

Malika Tukibateva, R. M. (2014). High Impact Practices and the First-Year Student. New Directions for Institutional Research, 2013(160), 19-35.

This article discusses three different types of service learning; Service Learning, Learning Communities and Undergraduate Research. It shares different examples of each type and studies their impacts on first year students. Ultimately it found that Service Learning takes place among smaller institutions, Learning Communities occur at large institutions and Undergraduate Research is the least utilized option by first year students. Data and regression analysis are used to support their findings.

O’Neill, N. (2010). Internships as a High Impact Practice: Some Reflections on Quality. Peer review : emerging trends and key debates in undergraduate education, 12(4), 4-8.

This article builds on the George Kuh’s six principles and delves deeper into internships and their effectiveness as high impact learning. O’Neill discusses what constitutes an internship, how universities can create them and how it takes everyone involved, from the student to the faculty, the advisor and the employer to make the experience worthwhile. This leads to potentially incorporating more career oriented styles of learning into these classes with internships being one of them. O’Neill states for those students already on a career path, internships “are learning in ‘real world’ settings, gain more substantial professional experience, and begin to develop a network of people in fields that interest them.” This seems self-explanatory but having to put in the effort to participate in an internship or career related activity takes commitment.  Investing time and energy into an activity is what makes it high impact by definition. 

Permzadian, V. & Crede, M. (2015) Do First Year Seminars Improve College Grades and Retention? A Quantitative Review of Their Overall Effectiveness and an Examination of Moderators of Effectiveness. Review of Education Research, 86 (1) 277-316. doi:3102/0034654315584955

According to the article, first-year seminars are currently being offered at almost 90% of institutions in the country. Narrative reviews show these courses are effective while the data in regards to sustained performance and retention are mixed.  As a statewide institution Ivy Tech community College sees both of these results vary by region.  This study discusses entry stress, adjustment to college, college knowledge and motivation as well as first-year experience characteristics, course length, grading, target population and moderator effectiveness among other criteria.  According to Permzadian & Crede, first-year seminars are meant to provide new students with the knowledge, skills and abilities that are necessary to overcome the different challenges of the first year of college.  This would also be a useful tool in keeping these types of courses on the catalog of courses.

Zilvinskis, John (2015). Using Authentic Assessment to Reinforce Student Learning in High-Impact Practices (pp. 7-12) Assessment Update. Nov/Dec. 2015, Vol. 27 Issue 6

This article discusses the assessment of High Impact Practice programs (HIPs) and how effective review of the programs can help impact student learning. It further details what an authentic assessment is and the theories behind why and how it is successful. Finally, the article provides examples from past conferences and organizations that have used authentic assessment of their HIPs and the results that have been found.  Authentic assessment is a very hot topic and this article would be beneficial when discussing grade norming.