Assessing Experiential Learning Program Design and Delivery Using Institutional Mission and Professional Standards

Background High-impact practices (HIPs), such as mentored research, Capstone projects, study abroad, and field experiences, have been shown to improve college student engagement through experience-based learning. Research indicates that these practices can have high impact when they are intentionally designed and delivered to align with institutional mission and professional standards. The administrative structure of a HIP initiative may not consider how to assess program effectiveness. Few close examples exist in the literature to guide program staff to understand whether the HIPs supported by their programs are being designed and delivered for high impact. Our study details the efforts of one unit at a large private university to evaluate the implementation of an experiential learning initiative intended to support faculty to design and deliver high-impact practices to students. Purpose This qualitative case study responds to the call for assessment to ensure that HIPs qualify as high impact. It illustrates a standards-based approach to evaluating a program of co-curricular, experientially based high-impact practices by determining how educational design and delivery aligns with the institution’s mission and professional standards for best practice. Methodology/approach To qualitatively evaluate how well our HIP program aligned with institutional mission and HIP standards, we collected narrative data drawn from six faculty projects, faculty interviews, and reflections from 70 participating students. We used the institutional mission and established HIP professional standards as confirmatory themes to code the narrative and observe levels of coverage. Administrative directives were mapped against the confirmatory themes to identify areas of high and low emphasis and emergent themes that fell outside specific mission and standards language were considered for meaning. Findings/conclusions Our qualitative assessment of a HIP program revealed program strengths and areas in need of improvement. By evaluating the concentration of institutional mission and professional standard themes across the project narratives and within the way the program was structured and administered, we found strong alignment existed in the areas of intellectual growth and interaction with faculty and peers. When we found that other mission themes and standards were present at lower levels, we mapped the administrative directives to the themes and discovered that the high concentration themes occurred more frequently in the directives. This insight led us to observe that addressing all mission and professional standard themes more clearly in the design phase could serve to align administrative directives more closely. In addition to the presence of confirmative themes across the data, we found emergent themes that had meaning to study participants but fell outside of the mission and industry standards. The evaluative process taught us important lessons around how administration-to-faculty program directives can impact the design and delivery of pedagogical practice. Recommendations Educational leaders should consistently use institutional mission and professional standard language in directives to faculty and staff; training faculty in designing HIPs to meet professional standards can benefit underserved students; and recognizing meaningful themes that emerge through program evaluation can illuminate important unanticipated outcomes.