Components of a Good WebQuest

WebQuest: A document with live links to the Internet

taken from Bernie Dodge creator of the WebQuest

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet. The WebQuest was first introduced by Bernie Dodge in the 1990’s. WebQuests use all levels of Blooms Taxonomy. The WebQuest is valued as a highly constructivist teaching method, meaning that students find, synthesize, and analyze information in a hands-on fashion, actively constructing their own understanding of the material. WebQuests focus on group work also making them popular examples of cooperative learning.

WebQuests should contain at least the following parts.

1. Introduction: The first component of a good WebQuest is the introduction. It should set the stage and provides some background information. This is a short paragraph that introduces your students to the WebQuest topic. Spend some time developing this section because it will determine how excited the students get about the assignment.

2. Task: This component is to explain to the student what is expected of them in this assignment. Make the task clear, concise, interesting and do-able. Since WebQuests’ purpose is to use the new technology, do your best to make the task up-to-date. Do not let this just become another ‘report” or “worksheet.”

3. Process: In this component of the WebQuest, give the students a list of steps that they will need to go through in order to accomplish the task. Direct them in how to organize the information they will be finding, giving them specific directions as to how the task should be completed. A description of the process the learners should go through in accomplishing the task. Provide students with the necessary resources to accomplish their task. This should include WWW sites but don’t forget that you can use other resources such as books, magazines, encyclopedias, and newspapers.

4. Evaluation: This is how you plan on assessing what students learned while they did the WebQuest. The evaluation can take many forms. It could be as simple as writing answers to specified questions, to doing oral reports, multimedia presentations, construction of a student generated project. In this section of the WebQuest list what you will be looking for when you grade their work. These qualities that you list for them, can then become a part of a rubric that you could develop to assess their learning.

5. Conclusion: This component is what brings closure to the WebQuest. It reminds the students what they’ve learned, and perhaps encourages them to extend the experience into other domains. One good way to continue their experience would be to provide a guiding question that encourages them to expand their thinking and reasoning beyond what they learned doing the task.

In writing your own Quest(ion) it will be helpful to think about what gets listed in the higher levels of things like Bloom's Taxonomy:

· analysis

· synthesis

· evaluation

Also consider such things as:

· comparison / contrast

· classification

· concept creation

· problem solving

· decision making

· policy formation