WebQuest Components

Designed to be completed in one to three class sessions (in classroom or online)

Learners will have grappled with a significant amount of new information and made sense of it.

Long Term

Typically takes between one week and a month in a classroom setting or online

Learners will have analyzed a body of knowledge deeply, transformed it in some way, and demonstrated an understanding of the material by creating something that others can respond to, on-line or off

Introduction -- sets the stage and provides some background information

Create an interest in the learner for the topic

Orient the learner as to what is coming

Examples of an Introduction

This quest challenges you to investigate the American Dream. What is the Dream? Is it the same for all Americans? Is it a myth? How has the Dream changed over time? Some see their dreams wither and die while others see their dreams fulfilled. Why? Everyone has dreams about a personally fulfilled life ...what is your dream?

The school that you attend wants to build a mini-desert botanical garden filled with plants, animals, reptiles, birds and rocks/minerals that can be found in Arizona. It will become the showplace of the campus. Your principal is going to have a Desert Design Contest. Participants are to submit ideas to the principal of how they would like the desert botanical garden to look. Then a panel of judges which will include teachers, students and parents will pick the best design and it will be used for the actual mini-desert botanical garden. A plaque will be placed in the garden commemorating the members of the team that designed it.

For every era there seems to be a defining moment and often a single person who embodies the essence of that era. For the Indigenous People known as the Sioux Nation, in the 1870's, a defining moment of victory was at the Little Big Horn and the single person was Crazy Horse. The defining humiliating defeat was at Wounded Knee in 1890.

83 years later, in an atmosphere of a growing civil rights movement in the United States, another battle occurred at the same wounded Knee. The single person who defined that era was the one who paid for his involvement with a life of incarceration in Leavenworth Prison where he is still serving two consecutive life sentences today. His name is Leonard Peltier.

Task -- a description of what the learner will have done at the end of the exercise

Doable and interesting

Elicits thinking in learners that goes beyond rote comprehension

Product oriented - like a HyperStudio stack, PowerPoint presentation or even an online debate

A Taxonomy of Tasks
A listing of task formats that have emerged over the past few years. This taxonomy describes those formats and suggests ways to optimize their use. It provides a language for discussing WebQuest tasks that should enhance our ability to design them well.

Task Design Worksheet
Do you already have a topic, some curricular goals and some essential questions in mind for your WebQuest? The purpose of this worksheet is to help you think your way through to the next step: deciding on a specific task or tasks that your learners will do.

Examples of a Task

How were such romantic excesses of the Jazz Age reported at the time? How were they viewed in such delightful duplicity, and how do we today explain the Great Depression to which the Jazz Age led? In order to answer these questions you must know the culture of the day, "live" the times, and "become" the people. As reporters for a Jazz Age newspaper, you and your classmates will be able to assume the identities of 20's correspondents. Your task will be to report the news as it happened.

You and your team will be responsible for producing one specific segment of the documentary. Each segment production team will be responsible to:

Research the theme for the group's segment,

Collaboratively create a 10-15 minute documentary segment using Microsoft PowerPoint (including appropriate images and voice-over narration),

Create a study guide that will reinforce the concepts incorporated into your segment (including reference to a relevant primary source document),

Preview the assembled documentary (including all five segments),

Utilize segment study guides to informally assess the effectiveness of the both the segments and their corresponding guides in communicating and reinforcing information about each segment.

You are to be the citizens of this town. Each group of four will represent the different viewpoints of the citizens. Each person within a group will take a position on the mural and research his/her "role" in order to defend his/her belief.

Your task is to read your position on the mural and conduct Internet research to learn more about your position in order to better defend it. You will also have a set of questions to guide you as you conduct your research.

After doing your research, you will meet with others who have your same role and create a HyperStudio presentation for the mayor. This presentation will be your group's "opening statement" and should highlight some of the reasons why you support or do not support the mural. A template of the presentation can be downloaded here.

After the presentations, the mayor will discuss and debate the issue with you - the citizens of this town.

Finally, the town's newspaper will publish an article about the town meeting and its outcome. Each student will write his/her own front page article. A newspaper template (in pdf format) is provided and can be downloaded here.

Process -- steps the learners should go through in accomplishing the task

Strategies for dividing the task into subtasks

Descriptions of roles to be played

Perspectives to be taken by each learner

Learning advice and interpersonal process advice

Relatively short and clear

A Checklist for the Process

Examples of a Process

Divide up the four roles among your group members. Each member goes to his/her page listed below. There, each person will find:

their position on the proposed mural

background information on why the person holds that position

a set of questions to help you guide your research

links to the Internet to help you research your role

Read your position on the mural. Conduct your Internet research. Meet with others who have your role and create a presentation to the mayor. Debate and defend your position at the town meeting. Assume the role of a newspaper reporter and objectively report the town meeting and its outcomes.

How Should They Be Remembered? Evaluating the Lives and Legacies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.

THE TITANIC: What Can Numbers Tell Us About Her Fatal Voyage?

An Introductory WebQuest on Democracy and the National Debt

Resources -- a list of information sources

	Pre-selected so that learners can focus their attention on the topic rather than surfing aimlessly.
	Include textbooks, audio tapes, face-to-face interaction with other people, a videoconference, a videotape along with web pages
	Divide the list of resources so that some are examined by everyone in the class, while others are read by subsets of learners who are playing a specific role or taking a particular perspective.
	Give separate data sources to learners. This can ensure the interdependence of the group and give the learners an incentive to teach each other what they've learned.

Examples of a Resource component

A WebQuest about the Arizona Sonoran Desert

"Great Expectations" for a Creative Textbook:
WebQuest on 19th and 20th Century British Literature

Evaluation -- authentic assessment

	Difficult to gauge with (readily) with a multiple-choice test. An evaluation rubric is called for.
	Evaluation rubrics would take a different form depending on the kind of task given to the learner.

Examples of an Evaluation

The Total Points for the WebQuest will be 200.

Possible points for the individual information summaries - 50 points. (Individual work is 25% of the grade).

Possible points for the Group e-mail to the President will be 50 points. (25% of the grade) The individual informational reports and e-mail letters will be evaluated using this rubric:

The PowerPoint presentation will be evaluated using this rubric: 100 possible points

Self-Evaluation Questions for Students and Self-Reflection

Conclusion -- summarizes the experience

Encourage reflection about the process

Extend and generalize what was learned

Provides the reader with a sense of closure

Examples of a Conclusion

You've finished, you've presented. Has this activity influenced your view of the American Dream? How? Now that you've completed the project, what new considerations can you offer? Is the American Dream a reality? What can the dreams of others teach you? How will your personal dream become part of America's future? So...what is the American Dream?

Print Resources can be used to extend your understanding of the Crisis in Kosovo. Read the daily newspaper and editorials to continue to understand the conflict and the fact that there are no clear-cut, easy answers. For further reading try these books:

Ideally, this project has served several purposes. It has:

presented you with the opportunity to play an active role in both your own education and that of your classmates--you were able to choose which literary works to read and evaluate.
introduced you to some of the many ways in which literature studies can cross into many other disciplines: art, history, education, business.
increased your knowledge of 19th and 20th century literature, from various sources and multiple genres.
fostered an environment for both collaborative-learning and independent assignments.
encouraged you to use technology as a resource.

You have completed a complex project. Be proud of the work that you have done to complete this assignment.
Now that the project is finished, take some time to relax. Curl up with a good book ... I can think of at least one that you will enjoy-- it has your name on it.

Top

	Create an interest in the learner for the topic
	Orient the learner as to what is coming

	Doable and interesting
	Elicits thinking in learners that goes beyond rote comprehension
	Product oriented - like a HyperStudio stack, PowerPoint presentation or even an online debate

	Strategies for dividing the task into subtasks
	Descriptions of roles to be played
	Perspectives to be taken by each learner
	Learning advice and interpersonal process advice
	Relatively short and clear

	Encourage reflection about the process
	Extend and generalize what was learned
	Provides the reader with a sense of closure