WebQuests

The first one to devise these is Bernie Dodge who is a professor at San Diego State University. Webquests are inquiry-based projects that are done for short-term or long-term purposes with the main sources of input from the internet. That does not mean that they cannot be extended to real life by means of surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. Plus, they can be created by either by teachers or learners. While doing our course in ELT at Warwick University with Tilly Harrison & Russell Stannard, we were divided in groups of four students, two at each computer. Every group is responsible for creating different quest for a specific target group of learner within a particular context. Then, we were given grades according to how well and engaging our quests were done. Have a look at the next WebGardens I made by using WebGardens which has invaluable number of quests to be used for teachers with absolutely brilliant ideas:

Their main importance is that they develop higher skills of researching, analyzing, and reproducing pieces of information rather than typical exercises of matching and filling in the gaps.

Points to keep in mind while designing Webquests:

• They should be individually-tailored to respond to particular students’ needs and their relevant contexts.

• Instead of sometimes wasting a substantial amount of time devising them, teachers can search the database of these quests to find some that serve teachers’ pedagogical aims as well as students’ needs.

• There are language-based and content-based quests or a little bit of both. Content-based quests might focus on developing research, skimming skills, critical analysis and evaluate different sources of information.

• Before teachers start their quests, they should ask their students about their preferences in order to choose a quest that is of main interest to all of them and engaging at the same time.

• Once the aims have been defined, the task should be laid out clearly so that students know what is exactly required of them. Here is the task I put for my students:

• Teachers then can give stage guidance by assigning different tasks; add certain images and links in order for the tasks to be attractive and interesting for the learners as seen in the task I devised myself for my learners:

• The final stage is the evaluation which should be based on the points asked for them during process stages.

• So in short, do needs analysis, choose a topic, identify your focus according to learners gap, assign different stage guidelines, and finally evaluate the work done.
• It is always an interesting idea to include real-life feedback from colleagues, teachers, and friends outside the class to help the learners to make the quests more interesting and engaging.

Limitations:

• It could be sometimes time consuming to design these tasks, but you can always use them again.

• There could be some technical problems with the way these work. For example, they should be saved every once and a while or you will have to repeat some parts of these quests.

• Uploading some photos and images could take a very long time. Not to mention, that Bernie and his partner Tom made the structure of these enquiries relatively long, but you can always skip some of these points.