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California Institute of Advanced Management

High-Impact Learning at the California Institute of Advanced Management


At the California Institute of Advanced Management (CIAM), we are committed to high-impact learning practices that reflect the best practices in education. Our high-impact teaching strategies support the transformative education of our mission by engaging our students in real-world learning experiences beyond the classroom.

What Is High-Impact Learning?


We have been an advocate for high-impact practices in higher education since our opening in 2011.

High-impact learning occurs when students are actively engaged in the best educational practices that allow them to apply their learning to their personal and work lives. High-impact teaching strategies allow students to perform better in their courses, earn their degrees faster, and improve engagement in their education.

High-impact teaching strategies require students to actively pose and solve problems, work collaboratively in a community of peers, experience real-world applications of knowledge, and reflect on their learning processes. According to George Kuh (2008), several educational experiences are conducive to high-impact learning, including:


  • Common intellectual experiences (such as our core curriculum)
  • Learning communities
  • Writing-intensive courses
  • Collaborative assignments and projects
  • Diversity and global learning in courses or programs that examine “difficult differences”
  • Service- and community-based learning
  • Internships
  • Capstone courses and projects

Kuh also identifies six common elements across high-impact practices:


  • Requires student effort and commitment to learning
  • Helps students build substantive relationships with peers and faculty
  • Helps students engage one another across differences, thus challenging students to develop new ways of thinking and responding to new people and situations
  • Provides students with rich, useful feedback, helping them to see feedback as a tool for growth and improvement
  • Helps students apply what they are learning and adapt the information to new situations
  • Affords students the opportunity to self-reflect and become aware of themselves as a person, and encourages lifelong learning


When instructors use these high-impact practices in higher education, research has shown increased rates of student retention, student engagement, and persistence to graduation for all students across diverse backgrounds.

CIAM’s High-Impact Teaching Strategies


Student-Led Consulting Projects

Build your experience by consulting for real businesses that need your help.


In the “real” world we are quite unlikely to encounter problems that look exactly like those we might solve in textbook exercises, which is why the best practices in teaching combine these learning tools with applied knowledge.

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Service Learning Projects

Support underserved communities through social-impact projects to help those in need.


Peter Drucker once stated, “It is not enough for business to do well; it must also do good” (Drucker, 1974). While all MBA programs teach you about business practices to ensure the enterprise does well, CIAM also desires its student to learn to do good.

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Business Simulations

Level-up with state of the art "business games" designed to challenge your management skills.


We believe that the best educational practices include experiential learning, which is why we provide our students with real-world, hands-on experience across our courses. Our high-impact teaching strategies incorporate technology in the learning experience and immerse our students in computer simulation exercises that help students strengthen their critical thinking and analytical skills.


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Student’s Experiences With High-Impact Learning

“CIAM provided me with professional business experience that is absolutely invaluable to me as a working professional now. I was able to complete consulting projects for real-world clients, and through these immersive experiences I learned how to give professional level presentations, create quality business reports, and manage a professional team. ... I am forever grateful to CIAM for the practical knowledge and skills that I walked away with.”



– Erika Tan, alumna, MBA in Executive Management


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