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HAIL: High-Impact Approach to Integrative Learning

HAIL stands for High-Impact Approach to Integrative Learning, and it is GSW’s new Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), a long-term plan to improve students’ experience at GSW. It is designed to help students connect their learning across their courses, in their communities, and throughout their lives after college.

Learning Outcomes

Through a combination of curricular and co-curricular experiences, students in HAIL experiences will have the chance to integrate their learning in new ways and apply it to different aspects of their lives. These experiences are closely connected to the three pillars of the GSW Experience:

  • People: How can I form meaningful relationships and be engaged in a supportive community?
  • Purpose: What do I want to devote my life to doing, and why? How can I use my talents and interests for this purpose?
  • Profession: How do I prepare myself for a fulfilling career and make myself professionally competitive in a dynamic world?

Student Focus

HAIL focuses on making connections in the first two years of college, and it is embedded in GSW’s general education options. Students can sign up for HAIL-designated experiences that fit their interests and life plans. This means that HAIL involves no new graduation requirements or additional courses—students can participate as part of their regular general education requirements.

Contact

HAIL, GSW's QEP

Dr. Paul Dahlgren
QEP Director

229-931-2191
hail@gsw.edu

Committee Members

Resources


Now Introducing

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Improving the GSW Experience for all students

How to Join HAIL

Joining HAIL is easy! Students can choose to participate in the HAIL courses and activities that fit their interests and life plans, all while completing their regular general education requirements. If you are interested in raising HAIL, here are the next steps:

  • Talk to your advisor about HAIL. Your advisor can tell you about the HAIL experiences available to you and help you register or sign up for them. They can also tell you more about the value of integrative learning and suggest HAIL experiences that fit your interests and plans.
  • Look for the list of upcoming HAIL experiences before you register for next semester’s courses. A list of HAIL experiences will be published each semester before the priority registration period so that you can decide which ones look right for you. They come in several different varieties that offer different approaches to integrative learning such as courses, clusters, blocks and stations.

Experience Types

HAIL Courses

HAIL Courses: standalone courses where you can explore your purpose in life and apply your learning to your experiences outside the classroom. These courses tend to integrate co-curricular activities into your classroom learning

HAIL Clusters

HAIL Clusters: courses with linked content and activities where you can make your own connections among your classes and decide how they may be useful to you. Students are encouraged to register for multiple classes within the cluster for the best experience, but it is not required.

HAIL Blocks

HAIL Blocks: fully integrated courses where you can work closely with people across disciplines and connect your learning in new and creative ways. Classes in these blocks will share content, activities, or projects, so students are required to be co-enrolled in them. (Talk to your advisor or contact hail@gsw.edu to enroll in a HAIL Block.)

HAIL Stations

HAIL Stations: courses that will help you bridge your general education to your major and start your professional journey. Most HAIL Stations will be a 2000-level course at the beginning of your degree program.

Faculty Perspective
Student Perspective

Participating faculty detail how HAIL will encourage instructors in a variety of disciplines across campus to coordinate with other subjects to create course clusters. This provides students with an interdisciplinary learning of each subject while faculty are provided new concepts of teaching their own subjects.

Current Georgia Southwestern students detail how they're experiencing the course clusters during the piloting of HAIL. Students within these classes explain how integrative learning has improved their understanding of a topic across courses and anticipate new course clusters to increase their knowledge of subjects across campus.