Five High-Impact Teaching Practices: A List of Possibilities

Abstract

If we want our teaching to have a major impact on student learning, what are some ideas that can help us do that? Since 1990, the scholars of teaching and learning have been generating a wealth of new ideas about college-level teaching. All of these are good ideas, but which ones have the most potential to have a high impact on student engagement and student learning? In this article, I offer my list of five high-impact teaching practices. Implementing any one of these can improve almost anyone’s teaching; implementing two or three of them will provide an amazing experience—an experience that will be as exciting for the professor as it will be for the students.

Keywords

• student engagement
• student learning
• meta-learners
• course design
• small groups
• service learning