FYI About First Year Inquiry

David A. Zonderman

Head, NCSU History Department

Objectives of  My FYI course:

1. Help students develop a sense of inquiry and responsibility for their own learning.

2. Foster intellectual development and growth toward intellectual maturity–education is more than "just learning the facts;" critical judgments and arguments can be made poorly or well, and the fact there is no single measure for all such judgment do not mean that they are all merely a matter of subjective opinion or that all judgments are equally good or bad. Ambiguity and uncertainty are inevitable in life, thus students must learn to make reasoned judgments and act in ways consistent with those judgments.

3. Provide guided practice in critical thinking. Through guided practice, students can learn to evaluate the depth, breadth, clarity and relevance of the answers they find to questions posed in class.

4. Provide guided practice in writing, speaking, asking questions, looking for answers, and evaluating evidence. Students are actively encouraged to master the process of intellectual investigation. This process involves the ability to formulate analytical questions, identify and collect appropriate evidence, present results logically and systematically, analyze and interpret evidence and arguments, formulate conclusions, and evaluate the worth and importance of those conclusions.

5. Encourage students to understand that hard work and increasingly deep thinking are required to answer complex questions for which there may be no single right noble intentions and intellectual curiosity are not enough.

6. Raise students’ awareness of the complexity of the questions they ask, and the aesthetic, economic, political and technical dimensions of the disciplines that will be involved in answering them.

7. Prepare students to be inquiring, self-motivated lifelong learners in their academic studies, their careers, and their daily lives.