Using Inquiry-Based Learning Outside of the Classroom: How Opportunities for Effective Practice Can Animate Course-Based Learning

This chapter explores how Clark University’s recent educational innovations in liberal education and effective practice (or LEEP) have led to a cultural shift in how “real-world,” “off-campus,” and “hands-on” experiences are viewed on campus. Instead of supplementing academic coursework, inquiry-based learning (IBL) opportunities that take place outside the classroom are being embraced as a fundamental mode of learning that animates what goes on inside the classroom. The goal is to engage students throughout their academic career by challenging them to take responsibility for connecting their learning through exploration, inquiry and by defining solutions to real-world issues. We connect IBL to the curriculum of one academic program, the entrepreneurship minor, to illustrate how a recurrent feedback loop emerges as the student moves through academic, co-curricular, and extracurricular experiences. We do this by mapping the student experience onto the curriculum and creating individual student pathways. With an emphasis on student-as-conduit, we demonstrate how non-course-based experiences can reinforce coursework, as well as how the curriculum can be responsive to the experiences of individual students.