A WebQuest about WebQuests

originally by Bernie Dodge
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquestwebquest-es.html
Modified by Kathrine Box

Introduction

In 1995, Tom March and Bernie Dodge drafted a web-based lesson format for their graduate Instructional Technology Class at San Diego State University. Some of their early thoughts are captured in the paper Some Thoughts About WebQuests, which was later published in the journal The Distance Educator. In that paper, a WebQuest was defined as:

Since that time, the WebQuest notion, simple though it is, has been adopted and adapted by teachers all over the country. Kathy Schrock in Massachusetts, for example, teaches it to her graduate students and developed an excellent slide show to explain the concept. Classes and workshops elsewhere are also spreading the word. TCET has gathered a list of resources and examples including WebQuests with TEKS correlations. In some cases, teachers created lessons that went beyond our early ideas; in others, it seems that they picked up on only part of what we were trying to communicate.

The Task

To develop great WebQuests, you need to develop a thorough understanding of the different possibilities open to you as you create web-based lessons. One way for you to get there is to critically analyze a number of webquest examples and discuss them from multiple perspectives. That's your task in this exercise.

By the end of this lesson, you and your group will answer these questions:

1. How is a Web Quest different than other Internet activities?
2. What makes a good WebQuest? Why?
3. What types of things should be avoided in an Internet-based activity? Why?

Resources

Different types of Internet Activities

• Pacific Bell Six Paths to China   
• Region 20 K-2 3-5 6-8 9-12
• TCET Internet Activity Formats

Here are the sites you'll be analyzing:

These sites were selected from Region 20's Creating Web-Based Lessons and Region 2's WebQuest Matrix.

The Process

1. First, each participant will have a hard copy of the WebQuest About WebQuests worksheet. To answer the questions given above, you'll break into groups of four. Within the group, each of you will take on one of the following roles:
   

   The Efficiency Expert: You value time a great deal. You believe that too much time is wasted in today's classrooms on unfocused activity and learners not knowing what they should be doing at a given moment. To you, a good WebQuest is one that delivers the most learning bang for the buck. If it's a short activity that teaches a small thing well, then you like it. If it's a long-term activity, it had better deliver a deep understanding of the topic it covers, in your view.

   The Affiliator: To you, the best learning activities are those in which students learn to work together. WebQuests that force collaboration and create a need for discussion and consensus are the best in your view. If a WebQuest could be done by a student working alone, it leaves you cold.

   The Altitudinist: Higher level thinking is everything to you. There's too much emphasis on factual recall in schools today. The only justification for bringing technology into schools is if it opens up the possibility that students will have to analyze information, synthesize multiple perspectives, and take a stance on the merits of something. You also value sites that allow for some creative expression on the part of the learner.

   The Technophile: You love this internet "thang". To you, the best WebQuest is one that makes the best use of the technology of the Web. If a WebQuest has attractive colors, animated gifs, and lots of links to interesting sites, you love it. If it makes minimal use of the Web, you'd rather use a worksheet.

2. Individually, you'll examine each of the sites on the list of resources and use the worksheet to jot down some notes of your opinions of each from the perspective of your role. You'll need to examine each site fairly quickly. Don't spend more than 10 minutes on any one site.
   
   
3. When everyone in the group has seen all the sites, it's time to get together to answer the questions. One way to proceed would be to go around and poll each team member for the best two and worst two from their perspective. Pay attention to each of the other perspectives, even if at first you think you might disagree with them.
   
   
4. There will probably not be unanimous agreement, so the next step is to talk together to hammer out a compromise consensus about your team's nominations for good and bad characteristics. Pool your perspectives and see if you can agree on what's best for the learner.
   
   
5. One person in each group should record the group's thoughts.
   
   
6. When debriefing time is called, report your results to the whole class. Do you think the other groups will agree with your conclusions?

Conclusion

This activity should provide some ideas to help you get started with WebQuests in your classroom. The best WebQuest is yet to be written. It might be yours!

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Texas Center for Educational Technology

tcet@unt.edu