I am a first year Kin student and I'm interested in the Inquiry course as a possible elective. Can someone please explain the difference between Inquiry 1SS3 (social science) which is only one semester in length and the Inquiry 1SC3 which must be taken in both semesters. Thanks for your help!

Hi James,

Well the biggest difference between the two is that to take 1SC3, you need to be registered in Science I or Math and Stats 1. If you're in Kin, if I'm not mistaken, I think you really only have the option of taking 1SS3. But I could be mistaken. Are you in science kin or social science kin? That'll make all the difference.

And as a side note, I'm going into 2nd year as a soc sci kid, and in first year, first semester, I took 1SS3. The course quality/how much you'll enjoy it really depends on the prof you get. What you may not know is that 1SS3 (if not all inquiry courses) has VERY small classes. Like highschool size classes. They aren't in huge lecture halls. So your prof gets to know who you are (sort of). I has Dr. Swanson for my inquiry teacher and I'd say I liked her. But your prof could be different, and that could change how you feel about the course. Inquiry 1SS3 is a no exam or midterm course, so if you have the time/you enjoy writing essays, and you have the room to take the elective, it may be beneficial to take the course. I know I had a final paper worth like 25% of my grade or something, and because there's no exam or midterms, there are a couple other assignments (that personally took me a while), most of which are assignments related to the final paper (like handing in the annotated bibliography or something).

Sorry that was long winded, but the more info, the better I think.

Hope that helped!

So, if there is a lot of essay writing... what are the benefits, or advantages (?), of taking inquiry in the humanities??? I don't really understand the course description but it seems to be stressed that I should take it. Should I even bother???

The main focus (or what I found to be the main focus) of the inquiry course for Soc Sci was to help with things like asking good questions, research skills, that kind of thing. It's hard to explain, but it's along those lines. So ya, it's kind of beneficial, but in no way is it reallllllly necessary.
In terms of essays, there's only 1 "term paper", but the smaller assignments contribute to your final grade.
But thats all for the 1SS3 course. In regards to the humanities inquiry course (I didnt even know we had one), I'm honestly not sure of it benefits or advantages, because it wasn't offered to me as I'm a soc sci student.
All in all, I'm sticking to what I said earlier. Basically if you're good at writing papers and/or you dont have a million others to worry about and/or you'd rather have one less exam to worry about/it fits into your schedule and you don't have to worry about giving up a more-desired elective, than I'd consider taking it for sure.
My only advice if you do: try not to take the evening class. I had the class on Wednesday nights from 7-10, and it was verrry hard to motivate myself to go to class (but that's just me).

Originally Posted by __lexington

So, if there is a lot of essay writing... what are the benefits, or advantages (?), of taking inquiry in the humanities??? I don't really understand the course description but it seems to be stressed that I should take it. Should I even bother???

I took Humanities Inquiry last year and overall I enjoyed it. The big pros are that there is no textbook to buy, no tests, no mid-term and no exam.

The Prof I had was Donaldson and throughout the term we did assignments that would help us with the essay we would have to write for the course, and basically the only major work you do in the course. For example we did an annotated bibliography assignment that would help us get started on our research for the essay and we did an MLA formatting assignment so we could learn how to do proper MLA formatting which would be needed for the essay. In turtorials we did things like peer editing our essays and group discussions so we could find out what strategies for approaching the essay worked best and what didn't work out well.

I found the lectures to be a bit boring because you weren't learning about a new subject or anything, all the lectures revolved around how to do your research and essay but overall it was a good course. It's a different structure than basically all of your other Humanities courses so it's fun to try a different format.

The class sizes as mentioned are also small so you have a chance to get to know your classmates and your professor and discuss more, whereas you wouldn't have that opportunity in a big lecture of 300 students. It's more like 40 students.

Basically what happens is there is one large topic that the class decides on and under that topic you decide on a question you want to answer and write your essay on. Our topic last year was Heroes and so everyone in the class did their essay on heroes but there were tons of different topics that we explored. I ended up writing my essay on Righteous Gentiles because those are people I personally view as heroes and I wanted to explore their actions and their lives. Others came up with questions about literary hereos, historial heroes and even just questions about heroism itself.

It's more of a fun course, it's not like super easy and there is still work involved but it's not a massive, heavy load of work and you get to work specifically on something you're interested in, something you choose to learn about.

I'm sorry if I've rambled on to long but hopefully this helps you or anyone else considering taking Humanities Inquiry and didn't really understand what it was about.

Stefanie:

No rambling at all! Thanks for the help!

Check out the reviews for Inquiry 1SC3 and Inquiry 1hu3 Inquiry In The Humanities

Stefanie.. you have a good review! Please post it as a reply to my review in the Reviews section here. I'm sure many others will find it useful