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small group activity that incorporates research, problem solving, and application of basic skills. It can be created at no cost to the teacher and can be constructed on
a computer with a minimum 486 processor that has Internet access. The lesson then provides guided research using the Internet while incorporating skills such as
problem-solving skills Kelly 2000:1. WebQuest was created by Dodge in 1995, during the early stages of
widespread Internet access. With the increase in Internet access in university labs, Dodge began to experiment with effective ways to integrate the technology into
classroom instruction March 2000. As Dodge developed activities for teachers, “he launched the WebQuests, arguably the most popular approach for integrating
the Web in classroom learning” March 2000:1. A teacher conducting an online search of posted WebQuests will find many activities from all subjects and topics.
Whether for a long term or short term, quality of WebQuest has certain critical attributes Strickland 2005:2.
2.9 WebQuests Components
The original
model of WebQuests includes six components, which are: Introduction, Task, Process, Resources, Evaluation and Conclusion that guide
students through the lesson. The components may be renamed or rearranged to meet the needs of the students. The WebQuests can be used as preceding
information for a unit, extension of an idea expressed within the unit, or a culminating project. WebQuests received the 1999 Project IDEA Identifying and
Disseminating Educational Alternatives award from the Delaware Department of
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Education and the Exceptional Children and Early Childhood Group Kelly 2000:1.
According to Vacca 2009: 441 WebQuests are typically organized around several components: introduction, task, process, resources, learning advice, and
conclusion. The introduction to a WebQuest provides an overview of the learning opportunity available to the students. Often the introduction places the learners in
a hypothetical situation somewhat similar to RAFT writing activities. As a result, students are assigned a role and a purpose for engaging in the learning activity.
The task component of the WebQuest describes the tasks students will complete and a list of questions that guide the information search. The process component
outlines the steps and procedures students will follow to complete the learning task. The resources component of a WebQuest provides links to information
resources on the internet that students will need to access to complete the learning task. The “learning advice” components provide directions to students on how to
organize information, whether in outlines, time lines, graphic organizer, notebook entries such as the double entry journal format, or I-charts. And finally, the
conclusion to the WebQuest brings closure to the activity and summarizes what students should have learned from participation in the WebQuest.
2.10 The Advantages of Using WebQuests
WebQuest is one way to incorporate practice in education. There were several practical advantages of WebQuests that made them particularly well suited for a
writing course, those are:
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1 WebQuests provided a way to integrate several learning outcomes within a
single assignment. By synthesizing these, faculty would not have to devise individual assignments for evaluation of learning, and students would not
have to struggle with numerous individual assignments focused on a single task.
2 WebQuests required that students use critical thinking skills. It was important
that in order to write well students begin using the higher cognitive levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation Bloom 1956.
3 Finally, from the advantage point of faculty, the WebQuest’s template
provides a ready framework for constructing assignments and developing learning activities. These advantages are explored in more detail below using
one of the nine WebQuests developed as an illustration. According to Tom March who is credited as being a major contributor to
the development and refinement of WebQuests in the early stages, WebQuests have several advantages, such as March1998:2 as quoted by Strickland 2005:4:
1 WebQuests promote student motivation and authenticity, develop thinking
skills, and encourage cooperative learning. 2
WebQuests increase student motivation by providing an essential question, real-life resources with which to work, and opportunities to work in
cooperative groups. 3
WebQuests, by their very nature, encourage the development of thinking skills. The assigned task requires students to “transform information into
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something else: a cluster that maps out the major issues, a comparison, a hypothesis, a solution, etc.” March 1998:2.
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In addition, WebQuests encourage cooperative learning among students. Because WebQuest’s tasks are often complex or involve controversial topics,
students work in groups to complete tasks March 1998:2.
2.11 Creating WebQuests
