Enhancing Student Learning and Success at ONU: The Promise of High-Impact Practices

George D. Kuh, Indiana University Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus and Director, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment

Creating the conditions that foster success in postsecondary education is more important than ever.  Much progress has been made during the past two decades in using active, collaborative, and problem-based learning, learning communities, theme-based residences, service learning, intrusive advising, internships, and other educationally purposeful programs and practices to enrich student learning and promote educational attainment.  Despite all this activity, too often these and other effective educational practices are underutilized.  In my symposium presentation I will review what matters to student success, examine some key indicators of quality such as student engagement, and illustrate the kinds of policies and “high impact” practices that channel student and institutional effort toward educationally purposeful activities and often boost the performance of historically underrepresented students and the less well-prepared.  I will also suggest some implications for Ohio Northern.