Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is an approach that could be used by undergraduate educators that appears to meet the suggestions by Dewey to integrate students' interests and experiences with content knowledge. The IBL approach has been described as "a range of strategies used to promote learning through students' active, and increasingly independent, investigation of questions, problems and issues, often for which there is no single answer". Further, defining characteristics of IBL, such as: "It is student directed, it encourages reflection on the teaching/learning process, it develops collaborative learning skills, it promotes active and deep learning", align with most descriptions of experiential education. In order to identify, explore, and describe what an IBL approach looks like in undergraduate education, research was conducted during the first semester of 2007 at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Through a grant from the New Zealand Ministry of Education, three in-depth case studies of undergraduate classes in Communications Disorders (CMDS 381: Clinical Practice 3), Engineering (ENGR101: Foundations of Engineering), and Sociology (SOCI 111: Exploring Society) were developed. To do this, the Naturalistic Inquiry conceptual framework, data collection, and data processing strategies described by Lincoln and Guba (1985) were used. The full case study for each course provides a thick description of the contexts to provide a nuanced understanding of students' and teachers' experiences in relation to characteristics of IBL in the literature.