Quick look
A grant-funded campuswide online gaming platform will expand on the growing efforts to encourage Iowa State University students to take advantage of high-impact experiences that connect directly to career skills.
AMES, Iowa - The activities that affect college students the most also tend to foster the skills employers prize most - leadership roles, entrepreneurship, undergraduate research, studying abroad, hands-on training and community-based learning, for instance.
Those sorts of high-impact practices help students thrive, and they're a growing emphasis at Iowa State University. Soon, Iowa State students will have yet another incentive to take advantage of potentially transformative experiences: They could end up gracing the leaderboard of a campuswide online game.
With support from a $100,000 grant from Lumina Foundation, Iowa State's game-design program is teaming up with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and other campus partners to develop an interactive gamified online platform designed to encourage participation in high-impact practices that align with students' career plans.
"This is going to be a highly personalized, fun way to engage students and build excitement and community," said Carmen Bain, CALS associate dean for academic innovation.
Building on CALS program
The grant will expand on the CALS Pathways to Innovation and Leadership program, which launched a year ago. Pathways offers 26 micro-credentials to help students identify high-impact practices that support their goals. Completing a Pathways micro-credential requires student reflection, ensuring they connect their experiences with capabilities they will need in their careers, and comes with a digital badge they can display on sites like LinkedIn.
"It's a visual way students can show potential employers they went above and beyond. They have the knowledge that comes from earning a degree, but they've also done things outside of the classroom to develop particular skills, and here's the evidence of it," Bain said.
The game platform will build on the Pathway Planner, a largely paper-based tool CALS students can use to map out what high-impact practices to pursue.
"It gets students to think, 'OK, during my time here, what do I want to get involved with, and what skills am I going to learn as a result?' Or vice versa, 'What skills should I learn to lay the foundation for this career path, and what kinds of opportunities are there for me to gain those skills?'" Bain said.
Faculty and students from Iowa State's game design program, which launched last fall, will partner with CALS and ISU's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) to expand on the planner by developing Build Your Pathway - a modular interactive online platform with game-like feedback such as dashboards, milestones and quests, said Jeffrey Wheatley, an assistant professor of philosophy and religious studies department and member of the game design program committee.
Game designers will also update a board game CALS uses with students to simulate the importance of high-impact practices, creating a new board game called Pathfinder that integrates realistic job searches in its final stage.
Research on using games for educational purposes shows positive effects on engagement, knowledge retention, entrepreneurial thinking and career development, Wheatley said.
The games should be ready to pilot with CALS students by this fall and available to roll out to other Iowa State colleges by fall 2027, Bain said.
Leaning into a strength
Iowa State's 2022-2031 strategic plan set a goal for every undergraduate to participate in at least three high-impact practices before graduation, an ambition that reflects a focus on experiential and student-centered learning. In the 2024-25 academic year, nearly 99% of graduates had completed at least three or more, with an average of eight per student.
High-impact practices have long been an Iowa State strength, but support has grown in recent years, said Ann Marie VanDerZanden, associate provost for academic programs. That has included a task force to better promote and track participation, the CELT-led micro-credential program and efforts by college-based teams.
One of the benefits of the Pathways program is its intentional focus on students linking their high-impact practice participation to skills that employers value, such as leadership, teamwork, communication and critical thinking, VanDerZanden said. Losing luggage while studying abroad, for example, can become a story that demonstrates resiliency and problem-solving instead of a forgotten footnote about the trip, she said.
"It really helps them think more deeply about what they've learned and develop the language and the narrative to describe it as they get ready to move into industry," she said.
Adding structure around high-impact practices also makes them more accessible to all students, VanDerZanden said. The gaming platform will help with that, as will pushes to promote high-impact practices in academic advising meetings and new student programs.
"We know some of our students who are missing out on these experiences have the ability and the opportunity, but they aren't finding out about them in a strategic and systematic way," she said.
Clear lines to career paths
Iowa State is one of 16 colleges and universities nationwide awarded a two-year grant through Lumina's From Campus to Career initiative, which is designed to scale career-connected high-impact practices and strengthen workforce outcomes for students. Nearly 200 institutions applied for the funding.
"In an era of rising skepticism about the value of college, strengthening the connection between learning and work is essential," said Debra Humphreys, vice president of strategic engagement at Lumina. "When students can clearly see and show how their education prepares them for meaningful careers, the value of a credential becomes tangible."
As part of the initiative, project teams from the 16 campuses will receive tailored technical assistance and cohort-based support to advance their efforts and learn from each other. The initiative is implemented in partnership with Excelencia in Education, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the Center for Innovation in Postsecondary Education.
For Pathways director Amy Mendee, being selected for the Lumina program is a gratifying testament to Iowa State's devotion to showing students how their education leads to their careers.
"The grant is a direct reflection of the innovative, universitywide work that has been quietly transforming student experiences at Iowa State," she said.
