Participation in multiple HIPs has a significant impact on the educational outcome measures (Kilgo, 2015); active and collaborative learning and undergraduate research were directly beneficial to students, whereas study abroad, internships, service learning, and capstone courses/experiences are less effective in influencing student outcomes. However, first-year seminar, academic learning communities, and writing-intensive courses were not significant predictors of any of the educational outcomes. Therefore, we are conducting a more robust analysis of which HIPs might be the most effective and have more impact on students’ success, with more emphasis on the most effective HIP combination.
Out of the eight colleges at Utah Valley University, there are 46 overarching programs, which encompass all of the degrees offered. Of the 46 programs at UVU, every program requires a global/intercultural (GI) course and English 1010 and 2010/2020 for graduation. These courses fulfill two of the ten High-Impact Practices, which include writing-intensive courses and diversity/global learning. Therefore, all programs have at least two HIP requirements to graduate.
Although every program has at least two HIP requirement, not every program encompasses every HIP, or all ten. First-year seminar courses are not required for any program to graduate. Engaged Learning Pillar conducted a desk review of the UVU course catalog, and results indicated that only two programs require common intellectual experience courses and learning community courses to graduate (4.35%). Five programs required collaborative project courses to graduate (10.87%) and six programs required writing-intensive courses to graduate (excluding the general education requirement of English 1010 and 2010/2020) (13.04%). The minority of programs requires a capstone project or course (34.78%). Excluding GI courses and English 1010 and 2010/2020, thirty-eight programs require at least one HIP to graduate (82.61%). Many programs include optional courses that are HIP in nature, including internships (39 programs, 84.78%).
Engaged Learning Instrument was administered to some of the HIPs course, and results indicate that HIPs vary with their level of engaged learning on a scale of 1-5, which reflect their different purposes and implementation in the classrooms.
