The research of the Encore Lab is guided by the Knowledge and Community Inquiry (KCI) model to support complex, active learning, and collective inquiry curricula. The KCI model has been developed over the past decade providing structure and design principles to: (1) epistemologically orient students to understand the nature of their topics of inquiry and learning communities, (2) build a student-developed knowledge base that targets their specific knowledge domain, (3) design inquiry scripts that specify the collaborative and individual activities by which students construct a knowledge base that serves as a resource for subsequent inquiry, and (4) establish the student outcomes that allow for assessment of progress on targeted learning goals.