What is a WebQuest?
WebQuest is a model created in 1995 by Professor Bernie Dodge at San diego State University.
You may already have some clues by looking at the name of the tool. ‘Web’ shows that it makes good use of the vast range of information and resources available on the internet, except that students do not need to search for information using the search engines as the resources from the internet are already pre-selected. ‘Quest’ hints that it is an inquiry-oriented learning tool. You can find out more in Professor Bernie Dodge’s interview or read his old blog posts, but I’ve summarised some key ideas for you.
In Professor Dodge’s words, WebQuest is simply ‘good teaching with the web’, or, in a longer definition, ‘'a constructivist lesson format, that is wrapped around a doable and interesting task that is a scalable-down version of something adults do. Most material, not necessarily all comes from the Web, and they are pre-selected by the teacher or the designer. WebQuests often but not always require students to take on roles’. He emphasizes the word ‘real’ as WebQuests deals with ‘real problem using real data, with real people in the real world’.
How it works?
Basically, a WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity that gives students a task and at the same time provide them with access to online resources to help them complete it. There are six components in a WebQuest.
Introduction: The main task or activity is introduced here. This section tells you what the WebQuest is centred around and can enhance students’ interests when this is well-written. If there are roles involved in the activity, they should be given out here.
Task: This tells learners what they need to do to complete the task, but broken down yet as the steps should be explained in Process.
Process: The process that students need to go through in order to complete the task is broken down and explained in detail to help them do it in small and manageable steps. This requires students to apply knowledge, most likely from the information they get from the resources provided, and analyse it or even synthesize knowledge.
Evaluation: This gives a rubric to show students how their work will be evaluated. This gives guidance to them as they know more about the assessment.
Conclusion: This is not only a summary of what students have learnt. To me, this section seems more to be a reflection as students can think about the the learning process and voice their opinions and feelings.
Credits: This not only gives credits to the source of the materials that are included in the Webquest, but also allows other teachers who want to modify the WebQuest to get to the original material and create their own WebQuest to suit their needs.
****There is also a Teacher page to give a bit more information of the context and the learning objectives.
Benefits
- WebQuests are created by teachers and the materials are likely to be what students interested in. This helps promote intrinsic motivation.
- The materials are extracted from the real world, they can be more up-to-date than textbooks. Besides, the language is more authentic.
- Students work in groups and are usually assigned different roles. This gives them the sense of ownership, and helps them develop collaboration and interpersonal skills. It also helps language learning as there will be a lot of interaction and negotiations while they work together to complete the task. This helps them co-construct knowledge.
- The nature of WebQuests allows the development of higher order thinking skills not only because it enables students to ‘find the answers’ by themselves, but also because they are given lots of opportunities to engage in activities requiring problem solving skills, analysis, reasoning and creation. There is the element of metacognition in the Conclusion part of a WebQuest when students reflect on their learning process.
Limitations
- The benefits mentioned above can only be brought by GOOD WebQuests but not all of them are good. In fact, not all of WebQuests in the database fulfill the definition of WebQuests as the activity itself does not align with the purpose of using WebQuests. They seem to me like webpages explaining some common internet activities.
- Some people may argue that WebQuest is too teacher-centred as all the materials are pre-selected. I personally think it is more effective if teachers choose the resources before giving them to students because students do not learn much even if they spend hours looking for information on Google. I’m not saying that the process of finding and selecting useful information on the net is useless, in fact they can be useful, but how students USE the information is far more useful in helping them learn the language, the content, or develop higher order thinking skills. Time is limited, I would not let the entire class drown in the sea of information on Google if I can simply find what’s useful for them.
- Ideally, WebQuests assign students with different roles and learn but honestly some learners may be free-riders and do not contribute. Therefor the reflection component in the Conclusion part is very important and teachers should observe and check it with students from time to time during the process of completing the task, rather than only when they’ve completed it.
- I realize that there may be some hiccups when students work together as those who are more proficient in English not necessarily have higher order thinking skills, whereas those who can think critically may not possess the language to express their ideas. I thought this is a limitation of WebQuests if not enough negotiation and interaction happen among learners, but then if they can help each other, this echoes to the point about co-construction of knowledge I mentioned above. Therefore teachers may need to give a bit guidance to help students work with each other.
Developing critical thinking skills is a hot topic in Hong Kong and while I was studying in high school I often needed to work in groups to complete some ‘projects’. After exploring WebQuests I don’t think those projects are good activities to help us develop higher order thinking skills as we only copied and pasted what we found on the internet and made powerpoints and presented it to our classmates. We did learn while we searched and selected information we needed, but nothing more. I like that WebQuests allow students to embrace uncertainty, but in small and manageable steps, with support from their teacher and their peers.
I’ve come across a lot of metaphors about the roles of teachers and one of the metaphors is that teachers are maps because they guide us on our journey. Now I’ve come up with a more complicated one after exploring WebQuest. I think thanks to technology, anything can be maps these days as students can find resources easily and learning happens anytime, anywhere. The information we find online can be maps too, but not allo of them are correct, and not all of them are useful. I will regard myself as a fire torch that sheds light on a useful map (and burn those that are not useful hahahaha), and students have their group-mates as companions in the journey. They can decide when and where to go on as long as they can reach where they should be on time. WebQuests tells them where to go and what to do, and would also keep reminding them to look at the beautiful scenery during their journey. Isn’t that amazing?
If you want to find out more about Webquest:
3. My friend Alexandra has also talked about Webquest in her blog. She gives a very detailed analysis with ideas about critical thinking skills such as Bloom's Taxonomy, and she found some examples of good Webquests.
