HIPs in the Classroom

The TTL Faculty Initiative harnesses the power of High-Impact Practices – HIPs – to transform the typical undergraduate classroom into an engaged learning experience.

Students sit outside and talk while enjoying the campus.

Decades of research point to the effectiveness of high-impact educational practices — HIPs — that transform students’ lives. These experiential learning opportunities have long been a feature of the Georgia Tech experience through signature co-curricular programs such as co-ops, internships, study abroad, and the VIP program. The HIPs in the Classroom project aims to bring experiential learning into the traditional classroom setting in order to expand access to these transformative activities to all students.

The TTL Innovation Incubator faculty grant program is a primary driver of success for the HIPs in the Classroom project. Faculty incorporate high impact practices into their courses with financial and pedagogical support from the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Office of Experiential and Engaged Learning.

GTREET: Georgia Tech Retreat Exploring Effective Teaching

This annual event is the seedbed and showcase for the TTL initiative. Explore TTL courses at the faculty poster session, participate in TTL workshops, and enjoy lunch with your faculty colleagues.

More Information

Working in a cohort model, grant recipients participate in summer course redesign workshops to learn about the 8 research-supported high-impact elements that all instructors can use to create transformative classroom learning environments.

  • The 2023 pilot cohort designed experiential engagement that fostered significant student learning and evaluated the impact of these changes on student outcomes.
    Read more about the 2023 cohort.
  • The 2024 cohort integrated undergraduate research into traditional courses through CUREs (Course-base Undergraduate Research Experiences) – inquiry-based projects that engage undergraduates in bona fide research experiences within traditional classroom settings – a pedagogy borrowed from the natural sciences that TTL faculty are extending to other disciplines.
    Read more about the 2024 cohort.
  • The 2025 cohort built service-learning courses that integrate classroom instruction with meaningful community engagement. Community-based learning promotes active engagement, collaboration, and practical application of knowledge, fostering a deeper understanding of academic concepts and cultivating civic responsibility among learners.
    Read more about the 2025 cohort.

Teaching Project Showcase

Visit the Teaching Project Showcase, an online library of teaching innovations, to learn about the transformative teaching projects, including the ones highlighted below.

Documenting Georgia Green Book Sites

Danielle Wilkens

Students connected place, history, and legacy as they catalogued and digitally documented former Green Book sites, some of which are in danger of disappearing. 

Can a Simulated Internet increase Student Empathy?

Ashutosh Dhekne

This project exposed students to the variability in Internet quality as experienced by many around the world — slow, unresponsive, or intermittently lossy — and then challenged students to repair these issues through active experimentation and reflection.   

Graphic Medicine Project

Leah Misemer

Students achieved increased storytelling skills and cultural sensitivity through partnering with the Shepherd Center to produce comics about the experience that patients with disabilities had with using new assistive technology.  

A "CURE" for the Polymer Processing Lab

Himani Sharma 

The goal of the project was to promote inquiry-based learning by empowering students to design and carry out their own experiments, moving away from a prescriptive, step-by-step approach and toward independent problem-solving and critical thinking. 

Enhancing Programming Proficiency through Robotics Projects

Rodrigo Borela 

Students improved their computational thinking skills, self-efficacy, and attitude toward computing by writing code to initiate various robot behaviors, such as making autonomous deliveries and maze navigation.