The University System of Georgia (USG) seeks to expand the usage and coding of American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) High-Impact Practices (HIPs) across its 26 institutions. HIPs are a collection of pedagogical strategies that, according to extensive research, are proven to have a “high impact” on undergraduate learning, especially for first-generation and underserved students.
Many faculty at UNG already employ teaching practices in line with these, but they may not meet the requirements to count as “High-Impact” courses—or perhaps they do, but have not been officially coded as such. The USG has created a vehicle to further enhance your courses and collect data on how HIPs are being implemented at each of the 26 institutions.
Even though many faculty at UNG already incorporate HIPs, the USG asks that all faculty complete the training to ensure coding consistency. To do so, all UNG faculty will:
The following list explains the benefits associated with faculty completing the USG HIP training process and coding courses for HIPs in Banner:
Many UNG faculty are already incorporating HIPs in their classes. By coding a class as a HIP course, students will be able to better locate classes that utilize these practices prior to registration and allow easier tracking by the University System of Georgia.
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To ensure that HIPs courses meet the official AAC&U designation, the USG created a short training module on the 8 essential elements of HIPs, which is hosted on the USG D2L platform. The USG would like faculty at all 26 institutions to complete the training, after which they will enter information about their HIPs courses into a Banner coding system. This will allow faculty, administrators, and current/prospective students to observe HIPs statuses through courses, degrees, programs, and institutions.
In Fall of 2020, the USG asked the provosts of the 26 institutions to nominate a HIPs Implementation team. Provost Gille selected the following to participate: Bryan Dawson (Psychological Science), Lindsay Linsky (Education), Jennifer Mook (Biology), Esther Morgan-Ellis (Music)
Over the past two years, the UNG HIPs Team learned about HIPs activities at other USG institutions, completed the training themselves, and conducted a pilot of the training with a group of faculty around campus. Additionally, they solicited feedback on the plan and working HIPs definitions from the faculty senate prior to moving forward.
Faculty HIPs Training using the USG mini-course will begin in Fall 2022, and Banner HIPs coding of the four focus HIPs will begin Spring 2023.
For the 2022-2023 Academic Year, UNG is focusing on the following four HIPs: