Webquest Focus: Five Rules for Creating a Great WebQuest
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the web. WebQuests are designed to use the learners’ time well, focusing on using information rather than finding it, and supporting learners’ thinking at the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels.
As a result of studying a large number of WebQuests of varying quality, five rules have been developed to help anyone create high quality WebQuests. The five guiding principles can be captured in the word FOCUS:
Find great sites
Orchestrate your learners and resources
Challenge your learners to think
Use the medium
Scaffold high expectations
1. Find great sites.
In general, try to find sites that are readable and interesting to your students, up to date and accurate, and come from sources your students wouldn’t ordinarily encounter in school. To find these sites, it is important that you master one or two of the most powerful search engines. By learning the quirks and advanced search techniques, you can become a better searcher. Also, search the “deep web.” This includes archives of newspaper and magazine articles, databases of images and documents, directories of museum holdings, and more. To keep track of these sites, use a web-based bookmark server that allows you to access your bookmarks from any computer.
2. Orchestrate learners and resources.
Because there are never enough computers to go around, you should organize your activities so that whatever access you do have is used well. Consider these possibilities:
· A single computer can be used to drive whole-class discussion and exploration with the teacher, not the students controlling the pace.
· One to ten computers can be used as learning stations for students to cycle through while others work offline.
· If internet access is limited to a scheduled set of lab periods, a lesson that frontloads the lab visit with offline activities prepares the students to use the lab time well.
· If all computers don’t have Internet access, students can access Web archives created on another computer, and saved on their hard drives.
Teachers should also organize their students, and use cooperative learning strategies to make group work more successful. A successful cooperative learning environment includes the following attributes:
· Positive interdependence.
· Promotive interaction.
· Individual and group accountability.
· Interpersonal and small group skills.
· Group processing.
A well-orchestrated WebQuest has these qualities as well. Guidance on how to work together should be a part of the process section of the WebQuest.
3. Challenge your learners to think.
The key element of a great WebQuest is a great task. Tasks should go beyond retelling and engage students in problem-solving, creativity, design, and judgment. Students can design travel itineraries, create news accounts or simulated diaries, or use authentic controversies as a vehicle around which to organize the study of a topic.
4. Use the medium.
The pedagogical structure of the WebQuest is not limited to the use of the Internet. A “Book Quest” can be developed for students to find a solution to a compelling problem or question by using the information in a variety of books. Teachers with only one computer can print out selected web pages for students not seated at computers. These are compromises that don’t fully exploit the medium. A fully developed WebQuest cannot easily be accomplished on paper.
In addition to selecting interesting and appropriate web pages for your students to read, line up people with interesting information to share. Options include ask-an-expert sites, or e-mail correspondence with parent volunteer mentors. Students can also use children in other classrooms as learning partners and sources of information.
The use of the Internet also allows conversations to be captured and used as material for learning. You can add a page to your WebQuest that allows students to post their opinions and findings, and invite others outside your classroom to participate as well.
Students should be encouraged to add interest by taking advantage of audio, video, and images on the Web when appropriate. However, you should be careful that students are not distracted by dazzle and noise that serves no instructional purpose.
5. Scaffold high expectations.
Scaffolding is a temporary structure that allows students to act more skilled than they really are. A great WebQuest builds scaffolding into the process as needed so that the bar of what students can produce can be raised. Three types of scaffolding are in a WebQuest: reception (provides guidance in learning from a given resource and retaining what was learned), transformation (helps students transform what they read into a new form), and production (provides students with templates, prompted writing guides, and multi media elements and structures).
The WebQuest model continues to evolve. By following the five FOCUS principles, new WebQuest creators can take advantage of what we’ve learned as a community and give the next generation of teachers a better place to start.
The Student WebQuest
WebQuests can provide a positive, educationally sound use of the Internet in the classroom. WebQuests are directly relevant to the curriculum, interesting and motivating to students as well as teachers, and they direct a more responsible use of the Internet. Well-written WebQuests require students to go beyond fact-finding, using their creativity and critical thinking skills to find solutions to a real-life problem.
The WebQuest was first developed in 1995 by San Diego State University’s Bernie Dodge and Tom March. Students were presented with a scenario and a task, usually a problem to solve or a project to complete. They were given a list of internet resources, and asked to analyze and synthesize the information and come up with their own creative solutions. Over the years, teachers wrote their own WebQuests, and instructors began to teach WebQuests in workshops and classes. Many teachers began to publish their own WebQuests for others, and WebQuest sites have grown on the Internet.
WebQuests can be found on WebQuest sites, or through the use of search engines. Additionally, teachers can create their own WebQuests for use in the classroom. When writing your own webquest, be sure to consider what you want students to learn, what materials they will use, and how student learning will be assessed. Also consider students’ interests, prior experience, and reading and skill levels. Curricular requirements and the desire to extend students’ learning beyond the classroom will often lead teachers to create interdisciplinary WebQuests in collaboration with other teachers.
Bernie Dodge has created “Building Blocks of a WebQuest” to describe all the elements of a good WebQuest: an introduction, a task, a process, resources, an evaluation, and a conclusion.
1. The introduction and the task: writing compelling scenarios.
Although teachers’ imaginations produce a wide variety of ideas and topics, scenarios tend to fall into categories including: bringing contemporary world problems into the classroom, evaluating history, creating products, dealing with life’s realities, and sparking students’ imaginations.
Formulating questions is one of the biggest challenges to producing a successful WebQuest. Short-term quests may require students to search for facts, while long term projects require students to answer difficult questions and analyze information.
2. The process.
In the process section, the teacher guides students through their task, often using a step-by-step guide. The teacher may also suggest ways to manage time, assign roles, collect data more effectively. Teachers can also provide strategies for working in a group, or directions for creating a storyboard.
3. Resources: Gathering Relevant Materials and Links.
The teacher must identify the resources the students will use. Remember to cite texts, reference books, videotapes, places, and people who may be useful or essential resources. Students can also conduct interviews and visit libraries or museums. Websites form the core of a WebQuest resource section. To create a concise, relevant list of sites, you must explore and evaluate many of them and choose those that are relevant and acceptable. In addition to search engines and directories, you should use print resources such as journals, magazines and books to find the appropriate sites.
Most websites fall into one of three categories: commercial sites, noncommercial sites, or individuals’ sites. Commercial sites can be rich with interesting current information, but they can also have distracting or inappropriate advertising. Noncommercial sites run by nonprofit institutions such as museums, public school systems, and universities can vary greatly in quality. However, they can provide valuable, advertising-free information. Individuals’ sites may be unreliable, inappropriate, or out-of-date. Teachers must thoroughly explore each site they ntend to use, and restrict students to those sites for their projects.
4. Evaluation.
WebQuests can result in a variety of products – paper or oral reports, multimedia presentations, dramatic performances, artwork, or musical compositions. The most appropriate tool for evaluation of any of these products is often a rubric created by the teacher and perhaps other students.
5. Conclusion.
The conclusion brings closure to the WebQuest, summing up the project and reviewing what the students have learned. Students are asked to continue reflecting on their projects, and may give feedback to the teacher.
With careful planning, WebQuests can allow both students and teachers to be productive and creative, using the Internet to spark the imagination, solve problems, and promote discussion about important issues.
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