Web Klinic on Website Evaluation and the WebQuest

Introduction

In the 1995, Tom March and Dr. Bernie Dodge drafted a format for web-based lessons called a WebQuest. Their early thoughts are captured in the paper Some Thoughts about WebQuest, which was later published in the journal, The Distance Educator. In that paper, a WebQuest was defined as:

Since that time, the WebQuest methodology and project process has been adopted and adapted by teachers all over the world.

The Task: To Evaluate a WebQuest
In order to develop great online lessons, you need to develop a thorough understanding of the different structures and possibilities open to you. One way for you to get there is to critically analyze a number of WebQuest examples and discuss them from multiple perspectives. That’s your task in this exercise.

By the end of this lesson, you and your partner will answer these questions:
1.    Which two of Web Quest examples are the best ones? Why?
2.    Which two are the worst? Why?
3.    What do best and worst mean to you?

Resources: 4 WebQuests

The Process
1.    First, each participant will have a hard copy of the worksheet. Select a role and exam each WebQuest from the perspective of the role. Take notes and be prepared to share out and decide as a group, which ones are best, worst and why.
 
The Efficiency Expert: You value time a great deal. You believe that too much time is wasted in today’s classrooms on unfocused activity and learners not knowing what they should be doing at a given moment. To you, a good WebQuest is one that delivers the most learning “bang for the buck”. If it’s a short, unambiguous activity that teaches a small thing well, then you like it. If it’s a long-term activity, it had better deliver a deep understanding of the topic it covers, in your view.     

The Standardizer: To you, the best learning activities are those in which students learn to use standards to help identify explicitly what they must know and be able to do. You believe standards bring what is to be learned into focus and hold learning as a constant.  A good WebQuest is one that sets uniform high expectations for all students; provides a basis for equal opportunity to learn; specifies exactly what will be assessed in order to return more useful information about student achievement and provides in-depth standard use.

 The Altitudinist: Higher level thinking is everything to you. There’s too much emphasis on factual recall in schools today. The only justification for bringing technology into schools is if it opens up the possibility that students will have to analyze information, synthesize multiple perspectives, and take a stance on the merits of something. You also value sites that allow for some creative expression on the part of the learner.     

The Technophile: You love this internet thang. To you, the best WebQuest is one that makes the best use of the technology of the Web. If a WebQuest has attractive colors, animated gifs, and lots of links to interesting sites, you love it. If it makes minimal use of the Web, you’d rather use a worksheet.

2.    Individually, you’ll examine each of the sites on the list of resources and use the worksheet to jot down some notes of your opinions of each from the perspective of your role. You’ll need to examine each site fairly quickly. Don’t spend more than 5 minutes on any one site.
 
3.    When everyone in the group has seen all the sites, it’s time to get together to answer the questions. One way to proceed would be to go around and poll each team member for the best two and worst two from their perspective. Pay attention to each of the other perspectives, even if at first you think you might disagree with them.
 
4.    There will probably not be unanimous agreement, so the next step is to talk together to hammer out a compromise consensus about your team’s nominations for best and worst. Pool your perspectives and see if you can agree on what’s best for the learner.
 
5.    When debriefing time is called, each group will report their results to the whole class. Do you think the other groups will agree with your conclusions?

Conclusion
Ideally, this exercise will provide you with a large pool of ideas to potentially work with to create a final project.
 
Web Klinic Worksheet
Click here to print this page out and use it to jot down notes while you examine each site. Remember to stay in character as you examine the sites.

We will use this sheet to click on the websites and go directly to them.

Your Role

___Efficiency Expert 
 
___Standardizer
 
___Altitudinist 
 
___Technophile

WebQuests to Explore

1. Health Factor
2. Exploring the Rainforest
3. Hurricanes and How to Stay Safe
4. Biome Advertising Agency