What Matters Now: High Impact Practices in a Time of Change

“What still anchors me is the community we build with students and colleagues, the collaboration, the creativity, and the pursuit of meaningful learning. “

Case Study

By J. Elizabeth Clark

It’s more than a little ironic that for someone whose career has become so tied to writing and technology, I almost failed my pedagogy and writing seminar in grad school because I couldn’t stand the use of technology in the classroom. Eventually, my professor gave me an alternate assignment just to get me through. Then I arrived at LaGuardia and all of my classes were scheduled in computer labs. There was no getting around it; I had to figure it out. And honestly, that’s been a pattern in my teaching ever since: every time a new technology comes along, we end up learning alongside our students, building digital literacy as we go. Right now, with generative AI, we’re just in the next chapter of that story.

That early push into technology is what first led me to ePortfolio. I was part of the original research team and have stayed involved with every major phase of the project. As a writing instructor, ePortfolio is one of the most valuable tools I have for understanding student learning over time. It lets students compose in multiple modes, layering images, videos, and reflection with traditional academic writing, and it gives me a much more complete picture of who they are. I get to see their “About Me” pages, their curated work, and the evolution of their voices throughout the semester. Those pieces shift and change, of course, but that’s what makes them so powerful. Each one is a snapshot of where a student is, what they’ve experienced, and where they’re going.

And really, that’s what I love most: ePortfolio gives students the chance to tell their story in their own voices. It’s not just about submitting assignments, it’s about figuring out what their education means to them, how they’ve grown, and how they want to move forward in the world. Even though our program is nearly 25 years old, it’s still that authentic student voice, that process of integration and reflection, that makes it meaningful.

While ePortfolio has been at the heart of my work at LaGuardia, one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had with high impact practices was completely offline. Early in my career, I taught an ENG 101 course and partnered with the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives. The students did primary research on Martin’s Field, a small park in Queens where locals walked their dogs, without realizing it was actually a pauper’s field and one of the last known African American and Native American burial grounds in the five boroughs. The students dove into archival research, conducted interviews in the park, and wrote letters advocating for its recognition as a burial ground. We held a town hall where they presented their findings and proposals. Today, that space, and its history, is formally recognized as the Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground. Many community leaders and activists worked for years to make that change happen, but I’m proud that my students contributed in a small way.

That project brought everything together: writing-to-learn, primary research, public presentation, and community engagement. It was experiential and integrative and hands-on. I still chase that feeling in my teaching. I think about it often as I build new assignments or courses. It’s something I hope to replicate in LIN 150, Introduction to Research Methods. LIN 150 is a new project-based learning course for Liberal Arts students developed over a year by a team of ten interdisciplinary faculty. I’m incredibly proud of the collaborative work that went into it and the shared vision of how project-based learning can put our students in the center of unscripted problems, applying their learning in a different, hands-on way.

Learning Communities have also been a big part of my teaching. I’ve taught in many over the years, but one of my favorites was the Infectious Disease Learning Community for STEM students. Because my doctoral work focused on HIV and AIDS, it gave me a chance to draw on that background in the writing classroom. We focused on science communication and how students were developing their identities as science communicators. Their writing was stronger because they were making real connections between their courses, linking composition, First-Year Seminar, and Public Speaking. That’s the beauty of Learning Communities: students understand their work in a broader context, and the audience for their writing becomes more authentic.

When I think about HIPs, the values I keep coming back to are integration, equity, digital literacy, collaboration, and student agency. I want my students to bring together what they’ve learned across courses, what they know from their own lives, and what they’re figuring out in community with others. Increasingly, I try to structure my courses around projects, because students learn so much when they’re asked to solve unscripted problems and work together to figure things out.

Outside the classroom, those same values guide my leadership work, especially around ePortfolio, integrative learning, digital learning, and reflective teaching. I’ve always believed these aren’t just course-level strategies. They’re institutional practices. And they don’t belong to one person or one department. ePortfolio, for example, touches every corner of the college. It takes all of us to make it work.

I think HIPs at LaGuardia hit a rough patch after COVID. We were all working so hard just to keep things afloat that it became harder to innovate or even stay connected. Faculty were burned out. Students were overwhelmed. And many of us were asking: Does this still matter?

For me, the answer is yes. It matters deeply. What still anchors me is the community we build with students and colleagues, the collaboration, the creativity, and the pursuit of meaningful learning. HIPs give us a way to design for that, to put students at the center and help them see that their stories, questions, and experiences are worth everything.

Courses Targeting High Impact Practices

• ENA/G 101: Introduction to Composition
• LIN 150: Introduction to Research Methods
• LIB 200: Science, Humanism, and Technology

Other High Impact Practices Used

• First-Year Experience
• Learning Communities
• Writing-Intensive
• Capstone

About

Dr. J. Elizabeth Clark is a Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY), where she teaches composition, children’s literature, fiction writing, and all three Liberal Arts milestone courses. A long-time leader in High Impact Practices (HIPs), she has helped shape LaGuardia’s nationally recognized ePortfolio program and currently serves as one of the college’s Writing Program Administrators.

Her work spans faculty development, digital learning, project-based curriculum design, and equity-centered pedagogy. She has been deeply involved in initiatives such as Learning That Lasts, a research and storytelling project on HIPs, and CUNY’s Building Bridges of Knowledge (BBK) project on Generative AI and the curriculum.

Dr. Clark’s scholarship bridges composition studies, SoTL, educational technology, and the medical humanities. A past Chair of the Council on Basic Writing, she is Associate Editor of the International Journal of ePortfolio and a frequent collaborator with colleges nationwide.

She believes in the power of reflection, integration, and student voice—and designs her courses to help students connect what they learn with who they are. Outside the classroom, she enjoys scuba diving, hiking, knitting, photography, and creative collaboration.