High Impact Practices (HIPs) are active learning strategies that promote deep learning and increase student engagement, especially for those traditionally most underserved by higher education (AAC&U, 2022). “Students who use these approaches tend to earn higher grades and retain, integrate, and transfer information at higher rates” (Kuh, 2008).

The AAC&U (2022) identifies 11 specific High Impact Practices:

• First-year seminars and experiences
• Common intellectual experiences (core experiences)
• Learning communities
• Writing-intensive courses
• Collaborative assignments and courses
• Undergraduate research and creative inquiry
• Service-learning or community-based learning
• Work-based learning, including internships
• Capstones courses and projects
• E-portfolios
• Diversity/global learning

The AAC&U identifies 8 key elements of High Impact Practices:

• Performance expectations set at appropriately high levels
• Significant investment of time and effort by students over an extended period of time
• Interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters
• Experiences with diversity, wherein students are exposed to and must contend with people and circumstances that differ from those with which students are familiar
• Frequent, timely, and constructive feedback
• Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning
• Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications
• Public demonstration of competence

Additional resources:

• AAC&U High Impact Practices 
• AAC&U HIP Essential Learning Outcomes