Mapping HIP Participation
Clemson University is committed to supporting students’ participation in High-Impact Practices (HIPs). Students have a wide variety of opportunities that provide real-world, hands-on, problem-solving experiences, such as Creative Inquiry, ClemsonThinks2, service-learning, cooperative education, the University Professional Internship Program, among others. In the institution’s current 10-year strategic plan, ClemsonForward, they outline a plan to continue these opportunities while also integrating student engagement more fully into the curriculum and instructional program. To take Clemson’s HIPs to the next level, a committed team of faculty and staff set out to identify gaps related to HIP taxonomy on campus, explore disparate data collection, determine evaluation activities and opportunities for collaboration, and promote common reporting to advance efforts to achieve ClemsonFoward Engagement goals.
For years, Clemson had wanted to reproduce a report that connects their NSSE data and disaggregates HIPs by student demographic factors that is based on the data that can be verified at the institution.
By engaging in this project, Clemson was able to map, define, and identify data while also understanding where and who was engaging in this process and areas that needed improvement. This work entailed partial use of institutional-level data, partial use of programmatic-level data, and some good old-fashioned walking around campus to talk to those who had pieces of the student engagement puzzle. However, much of their data is not centralized which prevented from engaging in learning more about the High Impact Practices (HIPs) that they were engaging in across their campus. They began this process by identifying the institutional scope of HIPs and conducted a two-part focus group with faculty and staff stakeholders. They also made use of the partial data they had and combined it with data that was available at their campus through various offices. The longitudinal aspects of this project was carried out with a entering cohort of students by identifying each students’ involvement in high-impact practices each semester for the entire time they spent at the institution or for six years until they left the institution with or without a degree.
With an intent to provide a roadmap for other institutions to fully understand engagement and drive change on their campus, they decided to focus on activities that fit the criteria of high impact practices or better known as HIPs.
The list of HIPs includes activities such as first-year seminars & experiences, learning communities, student-faculty research, study abroad and diversity/global learning, service-learning, internships, senior experiences/capstones, common intellectual experiences, writing intensive courses, and collaborative assignments and projects. However, through research they also determined that simply creating a list of HIP activities does not contribute towards significant change at the institution. Quality institutional alignment for HIPs has implications for improved curricular planning, strategic initiative generation, and democratization of data for decision-making. They found through discussions at their own institution and their counterparts at other institutions that integrated data systems for HIPs and collaboration across units on shared values are essential to an engaged institution, a belief also supported in the literature (Kinzie et al., 2015; Kinzie & Franklin, 2020; Nadasen & Alig, 2021).
Clemson scholars published their work in the article, Mapping and Making Meaning from Undergraduate Student Engagement in High‑Impact Educational Practices (Trogden, et al., 2022).
References:
Kinzie, J., Cogswell, C. A., & Wheatle, K. I. E. (2015). Reflections on the state of student engagement data use and strategies for action. Assessment Update, 27(2), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/au.30013
Kinzie, J., & Franklin, K. (2020). Twenty years of NSSE data use: Assessment lessons for the collective good. Assessment Update, 32(2), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/au.30206
Nadasen, D., & Alig, J. (2021). Data analytics: Uses, challenges, and best practices at public research universities. Retrieved from https://www.aplu.org/library/data-analytics-uses-challenges-and-best-practices-at-public-research-universities/file
Trogden, B.G., Kennedy, C. & Biyani, N.K. Mapping and Making Meaning from Undergraduate Student Engagement in High-Impact Educational Practices. Innov High Educ (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-022-09608-7
