Webquests: Letting Students Take Charge of Their Own Learning

Earlier today the East Central ISD District Leadership Team participated in their second day of leadership training for the 2012-2013 school year.

One of the highlights of today's training was a breakout session, facilitated by Miguel Guhlin (Director of Technology), during which district administrators worked in teams to complete a WebQuest.

 ECISD Admin work in teams to complete a WebQuest.

As I floated among the groups (assisting where needed) I was struck by how engaged these digital immigrants were. The question posed itself to me:

"How much more engaged would our students (aka - digital natives) 

be during an assignment such as this?"

Later in the day as I was reading my Twitter feed, I came across a posting from TCEA that shared

"A list of the best free tools to create and administer quizzes: http://bit.ly/N86jb5." 

Number three on the list was the Zunal WebQuest Maker, a free web-based program that allows users to easily create their own WebQuests. What are the odds? It had been years since I'd heard of WebQuests being used as instructional strategies. Was I missing something?  Surely this was no coincidence?  I decided to do some investigating ...

What is a Webquest?
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well; to focus on using information rather than looking for it; and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in February, 1995. (Source: http://webquest.org/)

(Source: K-12 Techsters)

What Does a WebQuest Look Like?

A real WebQuest is designed around a a doable and interesting task. It makes good use of the web, but isn't just a series of web-based experiences. It isn't a research report or a step-by-step science or math procedure.  Rather, it requires higher level thinking including synthesis, analysis, problem-solving, creativity and judgment. WebQuests contain five critical attributes: 

1. An introduction that sets the stage and provides some background information.

2. A task that is doable and interesting.

3. A description of the process the learners should go through in accomplishing the task. The process should be broken out into clearly described steps.

4. A conclusion that brings closure to the quest, reminds the learners about what they've learned, and perhaps encourages them to extend the experience into other domains.

5. A teacher page that includes a list of the curriculum standards the WebQuest covers, additional resources if needed, credits for the resources used in the WebQuest and any other information a teacher should now.

Additionally, WebQuests may contain an evaluation instrument that should clearly measure what students must know and be able to do to accomplish the task. Evaluation tools may take the form of a quiz, project rubric, activity, etc.

(Source: Bernie Dodge, San Diego University)

Why Choose a WebQuest?

Evidence indicates that WebQuests increase student motivation and therefore result in students putting forth more effort on academic tasks. The cooperative nature of WebQuests is also a motivating factor as the completion of tasks is dependent on the input of every member of the group. Additionally, WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well and to support higher-level thinking.

Zunal WebQuest Maker

I also spent some time this evening checking out the Zunal WebQuest Maker. After creating my free account, I was ready to begin. Clicking the Create a New WebQuest from Scratch button opens the WebQuest Maker. A template is provided on which to build the WebQuest and basic elements such as template design and color scheme can be set, new pages can be created, and resources such as text boxes, website links, uploaded files, images, video, avatars, and Glogster files can be inserted onto the pages of the WebQuest. The WebQuest Maker also includes evaluation tools such as quizzes, rubrics, and pre- and post-assessmemts.

Conclusion

My brief investigation into WebQuests unearthed a remarkable number of resources on the application of WebQuests as instructional strategies in the K-12 classroom. (Check out the following link to access some of these great resources: Useful Website Resources)