The new CSU Inquiry Core Curriculum is an opportunity to reimagine general education. In designing for inquiry, faculty are encouraged to invite students into their disciplines by engaging them in asking the very same questions that they themselves ask. In emphasizing transferable, in-demand core competencies, we ensure all CSU graduates have the skills for a fast-paced, ever-changing world. And through signature assignments, we provide students the opportunity to explicitly make meaning of their learning and produce something they can be proud to share with others. All of this impact is even greater when a student pursues an Inquiry Pathway, engaging with enduring questions and grand challenges through a multi-disciplinary lens.

While the CSU Inquiry Core Curriculum is an exciting opportunity to ignite student passion and improve classroom climate, it does take commitment on behalf of CSU faculty. While this can appear daunting, the information below is aimed at helping you see the connections between the various moving parts. While it may appear like you have to meet several disparate requirements, the reality is each component is closely tied to others. Often, in designing to meet one requirement, you are already well on your way to meeting another.

The 10,000 Foot Picture

At the highest level, the new Inquiry Core Curriculum includes four key course design elements:

• OT-36 Learning Outcomes
• The CSU Core Competencies
• The Inquiry Orientation
• The Signature Assignments

The state-mandated OT-36 outcomes require courses to not be “exclusively content focused” and to engage students in the methods and techniques of the various disciplines. Moreover, the specific OT-36 learning outcomes tend to emphasize such things as “effective communication”, “critical thinking”, “information literacy”, and even “inquiry”.^[1] Thus, OT-36 effectively mandates achievement of most of the core competencies and requires faculty to take an approach to course design that emphasizes students actively engaging in higher level thinking.

At CSU, we are making those nebulous requirements concrete with our Inquiry Orientation and Core Competencies. The Inquiry Orientation is a vehicle for engaging students in the methods of the discipline and ensuring the course is not “exclusively content focused”. The Core Competencies further develop the OT-36 learning outcomes and identify cross-cutting themes, for instance by helping students see that they are learning information literacy in both their Social and Behavioral Science course and in their Natural Science course.

And, finally, the Signature Assignments are the concrete product that makes these connections visible to students, faculty, and the greater community. Because OT-36 requires us to develop students’ higher level thinking skills, signature assignments emphasize assessing those skills. Further, because the core competencies that underlie many of the OT-36 learning outcomes apply across disciplines, the Signature Assignments provide a concrete tool by which students can see their development as they complete the CSU Inquiry Core Curriculum.

Achieving Cohesive Design

Given the relationships between the four main design elements, you should not regard them as disparate requirements. Instead, identify the synergies between them.

The most obvious synergies will be found between the OT-36 Outcomes and the Core Competencies. The specific core competencies associated with each requirement were chosen, in large part, because they highlight and elaborate on one or more of the OT-36 Outcomes you would already be required to emphasize. Table 1, below, provides an example of some of these key links.

You will also find synergies between OT-36 requirements and outcomes, the core competency of collaboration, and the Inquiry Orientation that defines the CSU Inquiry Core. These synergies will be less obvious and are much more dependent on your specific discipline and approach. Nonetheless, if you review Table 1 again, you can see that the referenced OT-36 outcomes (and more not mentioned) are, to various degrees, calls for students to engage in inquiry. For instance, natural science outcome 4 explicitly mentions scientific methods of inquiry and is a call to engage students in using science to examine a real problem. Similarly, arts and humanities outcome 2 is a call to engage students in discipline-specific inquiry, figuring out what is being communicated by a primary work and what to think about it.

Thus, whatever it is you intend to do to achieve those outcomes will likely already be formulated as a type of inquiry. Or at least can be to more fully make the value known to students. Relatedly, these very same outcomes are also calls for having students collaborate. Give them a complex problem and ask them, collectively, to “apply scientific methods of inquiry… to gather data and draw evidence-based conclusions.” When students work together, you can give them a more difficult activity, and it gives them practice communicating their ideas and clarifying misunderstandings. Moreover, it provides a means for you to check in on progress and provide feedback without having to collect and grade individual assignments.

Finally, all this comes together in the form of the signature assignment. If students have had ample opportunity to practice, collaboratively, engaging in inquiry in your discipline, now empower them to use their new-found knowledge and abilities to produce something interesting. Ask them to engage in the sort of activity you, yourself, engage in within your discipline or profession. The Signature Assignments can be a vehicle for ensuring that you are developing and assessing the OT-36 learning outcomes, by way of emphasizing the connected core competencies and engaging students in inquiry.

Designing an Inquiry Core Curriculum Course

Hopefully the above communicated the deep connections between the various key elements of the Inquiry Core Curriculum. Putting them all together, you are encouraged to rethink your course from the ground up in a way that best leverages the connections and provides students with an inviting and interesting introduction to your discipline. While there is no single right way to do that, below is a general course design framework that you may want to consider using.^[2]

The Overarching Goal

Start by setting aside everything and asking yourself “What do I want my students to be able to do at the end of this course?” Or, similarly, “What is it that I do (or professionals in the field do) that I want students to be able to do by the end of this course?” Alternatively, focus on socially important activities that any member of a democratic society should possess: “What socially important activity should students be able to engage in by the end of this course?”

Notice the emphasis on doing. A good answer to either of these questions should produce an activity (or set of activities). This is already moving you away from “exclusive content focus” by emphasizing what is done with information, rather than the information itself.

Be specific. The more specific you are, the more this will help you. Because if you are reasonably specific, you may have already figured out what (one of) your Signature Assignment(s) is. It is doing whatever you said you want them to be able to do.

Notably, you may have more than one overarching goal, but these should be quite high level. They are not course learning outcomes. Thus, you should likely have no more than 3.

Ancillary Goals and Learning Outcomes

What will students need to know or be able to do to achieve your overarching goal(s)? Your answer to that question will define your “ancillary goals”. Typically, these are skill oriented. For instance, if you expect students to gather appropriate data to make a prediction about a natural phenomenon, then they’ll need to know how to gather data.

But use the OT-36 and Core Competency Learning Outcomes to expedite this step. While these may be imposed on you from outside, they define or constrain the knowledge and skills that should be the focus of the course.

Map the pieces together. For each overarching goal, identify the OT-36 outcome(s) relevant to it. For each OT-36 outcome, identify the Core Competency learning outcome(s) that elaborate on it. You may also want to move directly from your overarching goal to some of the Core Competency learning outcomes (especially in the case of collaboration).

At this point, you should have most of the OT-36 learning outcomes and Core Competency learning outcomes mapped, although you may have some lingering. That is okay, set them aside and return to them a bit later.

Inquiry & Activities

For students to learn something, they need plenty of practice. This is true of both skills and informational knowledge. Thus, now that you have an idea of the knowledge and skills students will need to succeed on your signature assignment(s), work backward to figure out how you will ensure they have ample opportunity to develop.

This is where inquiry and collaboration come in. If you are thinking about specific information students will need to know, think about how you can organize the presentation and exploration of that information in the form of inquiry. Use questions or problems from your own research, or from your field, to help students see why that information is valuable and how it can be used. If possible, engage them in a process of discovering the information.

For more skill-oriented learning, collaborative in-class activities framed around trying to solve a problem or answer a question can be significantly more effective, and more fun, than a pure lecture. If you want students to learn how to examine a document or social problem through a specific theory, give them structured practice in doing that. If they need to learn how to gather resources, give them an activity focused on doing that. In general, try to scaffold development. If your overarching goal can only be achieved by putting together several complex skills, be sure students have time to practice each discrete skill first.

Put it all together

At this point, you should have an idea of what your signature assignment(s) will be, which Core Competency learning outcomes it aligns to, which OT-36 learning outcomes those align to, and the broad course structure. Now you need only put it together in a meaningful and compelling way.

This is where you can make the Inquiry Orientation most visible to your students. Rather than framing a class (or unit) around a topic as it may be stated in a textbook chapter, frame it around a question or problem. You will still be teaching the same key ideas, they are just wrapped in a more compelling story.

Once you have a sketch of a schedule, activities, and major assignments, if you have any remaining OT-36 or Core Competency learning outcomes, see where they may now fit. Don’t put them in as an afterthought, but it is very likely that they are already deeply embedded somewhere in your course design.