High Impact Practices
The pedagogical component of the Queensborough Academies, QCC’s model for student success, High Impact Practices are seven teaching modalities intended to promote the deep learning essential to students’ developing the skill and competencies of a liberal education. Though Queensborough has been implementing its Academies model and the accompanying High Impact Practices (HIPs) since 2009, several recent innovations have affected their success. During AY13-14 Queensborough added two new HIPs to its repertoire: Global and Diversity Learning and Undergraduate Research. In addition, QCC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning introduced two across-HIPs faculty development workshops to promote coherence among the formerly segregated initiatives. Those two workshops, Backward Course Design and Scaffolding Reflection Activities, combine the pedagogical techniques that distinguish HIPs, circulate faculty’s classroom innovations, and promote collaborative teaching and scholarship. Particularly pioneering is Queensborough HIPs Assessment Action plan, a multi-year assessment project developed by four QCC faculty and administrators when they participated in the AAC&U HIPs Assessment Institute in June 2014. Currently being implemented, the first stage of the assessment plan involves a formative assessment of HIPs implementation within the Academies model as well as a baseline direct measure of student learning in HIP courses.
