An inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of
the information that students interact with comes from resources on the Internet.
Types of WebQuests
We need to review some basic information about WebQuests. There are
basically two types of WebQuests, short term and long term.
A short term WebQuest lasts one to three
periods or days and its goal is basic knowledge acquisition. A good short term
WebQuest will also include some type of subject integration.
A long term WebQuest takes between one
week and on month to complete. A well planned long term WebQuest involves
"extending and refining knowledge".
Parts of a WebQuest
Introduction
The purpose of the introduction is to make the students aware of the upcoming
problem they will be exposed to. It is also hoped that the introduction will grab
the student's interest and motivate them to learn.
Task
The task section is similar to the more familiar learner objective we use in our
lesson planning. The task includes a description of what the learner will have
learned and completed at the conclude of the WebQuest. It may simply be the
better understanding of the assigned problem or a concrete project (webpage, Hyperstudio
stack, PowerPoint slide presentation) demonstrating what the learner achieved as a result
of the project. Bernie Dodge has just published a list of tasks types that can be
used in different WebQuests. You might want to look at these to help generate your
own ideas for WebQuest creation. Visit WebQuest Taskonomy: A
Taxonomy of Tasks.
Process
In the process section the teacher should give a recommended list of steps that
learners may go through to achieve their goal. Many WebQuests include cooperative
grouping so this section also tells the students what different roles are available to
play within each group. It is hear that the teacher can also include information
about how to effectively research, work with others, share the workload, etc. The
younger the students the more directive one will need to be. Teachers may allow
older students to vear from the specified path if it looks like the students have found
another way to complete the task. Of course this requires the teacher to be in
constant contact with each of the groups and how they are progressing. On some pages
about WebQuests by Dodge and March they also refer to this section of the WebQuest as
"guidance".
Information
Sources
This is the part of the process that may overwhelm some teachers that are moving
to more constructivist approaches to teaching and learning. It is the teacher's job
to sort through all the materials they have or can find on the given topic/problem that
will valuable for the students. These resources are certainly not limited to the
Internet. In fact, finding the right type of information on the Internet (accurate,
accessible to students) may also be a lesson in futility and frustration.
Unfortunately the Internet still has a long way to go in terms of making it easy to find
information. It certainly has become easier with user-friendly search tools (www.dogpile.com, www.infind.com,
www.yahoo.com, www.infoseek.com,
www.askjeeves.com), but the fact remains searching
several hundred million pages for the information and materials you are looking for can be
a mind-boggling if not overwhelming task.
Evaluation
The evaluation section only appears in later WebQuest publications. It is
so new that Dodge and March don't point to many examples on the web to illustrate what
this section involves in an actual WebQuest. Basically Dodge and March say that if
we spend time doing a learning activity in the class we need to be able to evaluate the
learning that we hope took place. Since most WebQuests involve high thinking skills
evaluating the learning can be difficult for teachers with a standard pencil and paper
test. Dodge and March stress the importance of developing learning rubrics to use
for evaluation.
Conclusion
The conclusion section (described my Dodge and March as optional) is where a
teacher can debrief the students....review what was learned and gather feedback about the
whole learning process. When writing a concluding section a teacher might suggest
related topics that students may want to pursue on their own as well as discussion
questions to answer in class. This can be an extremely valuable step as this is where
the teacher is able to review what was learned with the students again able to get a sense
of what students learned.
Why WebQuests?!
WebQuests' goals and attributes are easily aligned to those of constructivist
theories of education as well as problem-based learning.
"WebQuests are authentic": The central
question or problem involved with a quality Webquest is one that entices students to find
an answer. It is a question that needs to be answered. It may be the type of
real world problem that students will have to solve in their everyday life. Real
world problems are authentic, meaningful, engaging problems that students will embrace. At
least that is our assumption....if we make the materials more challenging....the students
will rise to meet those challenges.
"WebQuests increase
motivation": Along with having authentic tasks to complete comes the idea
that if students are given some control in the learning process they will take more
responsibility for it and will thus be more motivated. Another factor involved in
WebQuests that leads to greater student motivation is the fact that students get to work
with "real" resources. Students can go outside the textbook to acquire
some of their information. They can be exposed and gather information from a
variety of resources. The Internet will provide access to many of these
sub-resources. For some students working on the Internet in any way, shape, or form
is motivating. WebQuests allow educators to focus the general "Internet is
cool" motivation to high quality learning resources.
"WebQuests require
higher order thinking skills": Granted, WebQuests can be used for simple
information retrieval, but one of their greatest potential strengths is that they require
students to interact with information in powerful ways. WebQuests require students
to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information and to often create a something that
demonstates the student's learning. Teachers can incorporate scaffolding techniques
into their procedure section to help step students in a direction that leads to high-level
thinking.
"WebQuests
incorporate cooperative learning": Because many of the questions or problems
posed in WebQuests (especially long-term) are difficult to answer it is unrealistic to
expect each student to complete each step of the process or to master all that has to be
learned. Rather it is a much better use of educational time to develop problem
solving groups with each student having a specific group that they are responsible to for
completing to assist their group.
WebQuest Collections
University maintained
Bridgewater State College,
Bridgewater, MA: Professor Kathleen Schrock's Homepage
Schrock teaches educational technology classes to teachers. Many of the various
WebQuests her students have created over the years are housed at her site.
Number of WebQuests = 70 (as of 7/99)
Indiana University,
Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Jackie Carrigan's WebQuest Page
Carrigan teachers technology classes to graduate students at several of IU's campuses.
Many of the WebQuests his participants have created are available at this site.
Number of WebQuests = 82 (as of 7/99)
Indiana University,
Bloomington, IN: Lee Ehman's WebQuest Page
Ehman teachers a class for pre-service teachers in which they create and publish their
WebQuests which are available on Ehman's site.
Number of WebQuests = 17 (as of 7/99)
Louisiana State University, Baton
Rouge, LA: Professor Harriet Taylor's LSU WebQuests Page
Professor Taylor teaches a telecommunications class for the College of Education and for
the past few semesters has required groups of students to develop WebQuests. Their
efforst are posted here.
Number of WebQuests = 20 (as of 7/99)
New Mexico State
University, Las Cruces, NM: Carmen Gonzales' NMSU Student
WebQuests
Exemplary WebQuests designed by students in the Learning Technologies Program. Most
were created by classroom teachers and have been tested by their students. Some of the
WebQuests are available in Spanish.
Number of WebQuests = 35 (as of 7/99)
San Franciso State University, San
Francisco, CA: Kathleen Ferenz's WebQuest Page
WebQuests created by students in her graduate classes from the past few semesters.
The projects listed on her class pages do not appear to be strictly WebQuests.
There are several that are teacher created webpages.
Number of WebQuests/Projects = 80 (as of 7/99)
Univeristy of Maine, Orono, ME:
Jim Chiavacci's WebQuest Page
Student Projects from Chiavacci's EDT 525 Telecommunications class at University of Maine
College of Education and Human Development.
Number of WebQuests/Projects = 21 (as of 7/99)
Richmond University,
Richmond, VA: Dr. Patricia Stohr-Hunt's Learning With WebQuests Page
WebQuests prepared by pre-service teachers. Several WebQuests have been labeled as
award winning.
Number of WebQuests/Projects = 29 (as of 7/99)
K-12 maintained
Manteno Community School
District, Manteno, IL: WebQuest Page
WebQuests developed by both district teachers and graduate students. Quests are
labeled long or short term. The district has added another page of WebQuests (some overlap
exists) where they continue to add additional WebQuests. They also have a page of UNwebquests
(under development).
Number of WebQuests/Projects = 40+ (as of 7/99)
Memphis City
Schools, Memphis, TN: WebQuest Page
WebQuests written by teachers that work for the Memphis City School District.
Number of WebQuests/Projects = 22 (as of 7/99)
Salt Lake City School
District, Salt Lake City, UT: WebWeaver Page
WebQuests written by teachers in the district.
Number of WebQuests/Projects = 13 (as of 7/99)
San Bernadino County
Schools, San Bernadino, CA: WebQuest Curriculum Resources
WebQuest developed by teachers and EMT (Educational and Media Technology) staff work for
the San Bernadino Country School District.
Number of WebQuests/Projects = 15 (as of 7/99)
San Diego City Schools, San Diego,
CA: Projects Database
For the past few years this school district has been using grant monies to create
WebQuests projects to support their curriculum. Projects are searchable by grade
level, curricular area, and keywords. Difficult to determine how many different
projects are available at this site and whether or not all of them are WebQuests.
Bernie Dodge (WebQuest creator) has worked with this school district to create these
projects by partnering San Diego City Schools and San Diego State University.
Another useful feature of this site is that projects are given various statuses to mark
how complete they are. The different labels are not defined, but include Alpha,
Beta, and Released.
Estimated Number of WebQuests/Projects = 175 (as of 7/99)
Sweetwater Union High
School District, Chula Vista, CA: Act Now Curriculum Library
Site houses several WebQuests created by ActNow (federal grant) participants.
Page also has links to other sites which house WebQuests at other universities or
K-12 schools.
Estimated Number of WebQuests/Projects = 9 (as of 7/99)
Resources
Dodge, B. (1997). Building Blocks
of a WebQuest [Online document]. Available: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/bdodge/webquest/BuildingBlocks.html
Dodge, B. (1997). Some thoughts
about WebQuests [Online document]. Available: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/EDTEC596/About_WebQuests.html
March, T. (1998). Why WebQuests?,
an introduction [Online document]. Available: http://www.ozline.com/webquests/intro.html
Moursund, D. (1999). Project-based
learning using information technology. Eugene, OR: International Society for
Technology in Education.
San Diego City Schools. (1998). Staff
Development: Triton/Patterns Fall Symposium 98 [Online
document]. Available: http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/staffdev/tpfs98/
San Diego City Schools. (1998).
Projects page [Online database]. Available: http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/projects/
Schrock, K. (1998). WebQuests in
Our Future: The Teacher's Role in Cyberspace [Online document]. Available: http://www.discoveryschool.com/schrockguide/webquest/wqsl1.html
Yoder, M.B. (1999). The Student
WebQuest: A Productive and Thought-Provoking Use of the Internet. Learning and Leading
with Technology, 26(7), 6-9, 52-53. |
