UNG and the HIPs Implementation Process

Posted: April 8, 2021

Bryan Dawson, Professor of Psychological Science

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of posts called HIPs Implementation about the ongoing USG-directed effort to document and promote HIPs at UNG.

Over the past few years, we have seen High – Impact Practices (HIPs) become more a part of the general lexicon for educators and universities. Not only have more faculty and universities begun to adopt and implement HIPS into their courses, we have seen more junior and senior faculty pursuing professional development to learn how to implement these practices in their course work. The benefits of HIPs have been well documented and the impacts on our first – generation population are huge! To that end, the USG has begun asking universities to track the current courses that offer High – Impact Practices with a focus on four HIPs in particular: Service Learning, Work-Based Learning, Undergraduate Research, and Capstone Experiences. Here at UNG, we have also been tracking our study abroad and freshman experience courses with an eye toward the impact of e-portfolios to support our students' professional career growth.  

Recently, our university has formed a HIP Implementation Team. The members include myself, Lindsay Linsky (Education), Jennifer Mook (Biology), and Esther Morgan-Ellis (Music). We have been attending USG seminars to help develop a shared language a round HIPs, and have also been involved in discussions surrounding scalability of our current HIP coding efforts. Our goals for implementing HIPs in more courses involve working heavily with our CTLL office to help faculty at UNG develop a shared definition and evaluation process of the activities and experiences we currently implement and developing some tools to help faculty demonstrate the ways in which their courses utilize HIP s for students. It is our hope that by working with departments directly we can reduce the load for faculty in the effort to scale HIPs across other courses in their departments, and also make the communication of those HIPS and their elements clearer for students and colleagues. 

We welcome input from the UNG community and we look forward to collaborating on the creation of a meaningful and institution-specific approach to HIP implementation.