This paper reflects the results from a 3-year quantitative study in higher education on inquiry-based learning (IBL). Utilizing primary data collection in a quasi-experimental survey, we examined the impact of IBL on six cohorts of undergraduate students. We aimed to answer our main research question: Can IBL be an effective pedagogy that helps students develop their key skills, through: (1) exploring how students assessed themselves and their peers on four skills; and (2) comparing student and peer assessments across social work courses utilizing IBL as pedagogy utilizing a social work course taught with traditional methods (non-IBL), and a nonsocial-work course using IBL. We analyzed the quantitative data applying bivariate analysis (paired and independent t-tests) with SPSS. We found that in social work and nonsocial-work courses using IBL as pedagogy, students and their peers identified an increase in the development of their key skills; peer-assessments were consistently higher than self-assessments. Our study reveals that IBL may offer an opportunity to provide authentic learning activities and assessments in social work education to support students' development of four key skills required for success in higher education.