Webquest 2.0: Best Practices for the 21st Century - Jennifer Levin-Goldberg
Webquests have been burgeoning in their popularity and utilization within the educational environment. In order to effectively implement a Webquest, best practices must be employed; however, what these best practices are for a Webquest should reflect the exigent 21st century skills students will need in order to be successful and productive in the global community.
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18 Comments
Your research is very interesting. I am a classroom teacher so I am curious about the implmentation of webquests in the classroom. In looking at your research, these strategies will work well in the higher education setting. Do you know if these strategies are incorporated into educator preparation programs? In the future, will you look at how leaders encourage and assist educators in using webquests in the classroom?
Thank you for your interest Annette and I hope my article assisted you in implementing Webquests in the classroom for the 21st century century. At this time, most teacher education programs do not inform young teachers as to the worth, research, components, and best practice strategies for utilizing Webquests into the classroom. However, there are a few school districts that have introduced the Webquest to their employed educators. Now, even though they have introduced them to their teachers, they have not informed them to best practices regarding them for 21st century skills. That is why I felt this article was exigent to write and furnish educators, educator leaders, and professors to what these best practices should be in order to foster 21st century skills.
The second part of your question is interesting. I never considered that but after you brought it to my attention, I very well may look into this. Thank you for the suggestion!
WebQuests are of particular interest to me. I have created several on Zunal and I am always looking for new approaches to using them in a classroom. The best part about them is that through a web link, they can really be added to any tyope of online or hybrid classroom. I have been looking at Flipped Classrooms lately and I think WebQuests would work nicely in this model.
I do know that I have had to dabble in WebQuests for certain Masters level education classes. I also wonder if these are being taught in teacher preparation programs. I believe that they are a fantastic tool for teachers to use. Zunal has a library of WebQuests for all grade levels and content areas and they are fairly easy to create as well.
Rick
Rick, I am so glad that you are intrigued with Webquests! I sincerely hope my article gave you some great ways to employ them in the classroom to better prepare our learners for the 21st century. I have used Zunal myself. I love the Flipped Classroom and there are so many invaluable ways it can be utilized, including the inclusion of the Webquest. I am not certain if the implementation of them are being pedagogically taught in teacher preparation programs. I can say I have worked in two institutions for teacher education and none have. GCU is the only one that encourages student to dabble into it I found. I think this may be due to instructor and institutional unfamiliarity with them. Technology moves faster than we can sometimes keep up with and then there is always the comfort level.
I know that some districts I have been a part of mention or have recognized Webquests in trainings; however, there is limited if any research regarding best practices for 21st century skill building; therefore, those trainings are a bit restricting. That is why I felt compelled to write this article. I am glad you enjoyed it and hope it inspires and assists others as well. Thank you for your comments and time you spent reading my article!
Thank you for your response, Jennifer. I too have not seen WebQuests outside of GCU. I learned how to use Zunal in a Master's course that I taught here on Educational Technology, and I have been a fan ever since. I like to view the different WebQuests available on Zunal as well for ideas.
You are absolutely correct about the pace of technology. It is difficult to stay on top of it. I have found that simply going outside of my comfort zone and experimenting is the best way to learn.
WebQuests provide an excellent vehicle to use many Web 2.0 tools in our teaching as well. It is great to see an article about best practices related to them.
Rick
Jennifer, I enjoyed reading your research. I live in the state of Georgia and we are one of 10 states that are now using CCRPI (Career and College Ready Performance Index) in lieu of AYP.
An underlying goal of CCRPI is to prepare students (with skills necessary) to graduate from high school with rigorous content knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge (beginning at the elementary school).
After reading your research it makes me wonder if students who are in states utilizing CCRPI will possess more of the skills that you discuss to enable them to be better prepared for the workforce. I can't help but think that the elementary, middle, and high schools will be looking for Web 2.0 tools such as the Webquests to help meet the requirements of the indicators.
It is of utmost importance to engage our students and technology is the way to do it! I have worked at the elementary, middle, and high school levels and it is probably more critical now than ever, to integrate technology into the existing curriculum, because we have so many other things to compete with to gain student attention-Web 2.0 tools are definitely one way to achieve that!
Anna
Jennifer,
Thank you for resurrecting the concept of Webquests and 21st Century Skills. I starting using webquests eight, nine years ago when I taught at a very tech-oriented private secondary school. My students loved them. They fit a variety of learners and learning objectives.
Stephenie
Very informative, Jennifer! I would like to see more webquests utilized, both online and on-ground. I particularly liked how you combined the skills employers are looking for and the skills a webquest can build. I am always surprised at how many of my students are unable to create graphs in Excel, create a powerpoint, or do other low-level technology. I also like the examples provided in your paper, which are excellent jumping off places for those of us creating our own webquests. Great job!
Jayne Yenko
Anna, thank you for your comments. Webquests would be an excellent approach for instilling those skills. I am glad you feel that Webquests are a viable method for cultivating these 21st century exigencies. I hope my research assisted you!
Stephanie, thank you for your comments. I concur that Webquests are an ideal 21st century approach to differentiating student needs (interests, learning styles, multiple intelligences, and academic readiness).
Jayne, thank you so much for your thoughts. I am glad that my examples served as a great model for a jumping off point! If you commence utilizing them, let me know how successful they are!
Jennifer,
This was certainly an introduction to a new technological teaching tool for me. I appreciate your research and aligning it with the skills that employers are seeking. I certainly believe that there is room to add Webquests to pedagogical techniques and the significance of making certain that they are properly designed and employed.
I was wondering if during your research if the issues of access or grade level were addressed?
Carolyn
Jennifer,
I enjoyed reading your article about the use of Webquests in the area of teaching. As a high school teacher for over 15 years, I have seen the use of the internet, Webquests, and other technology tools explode. I commend you on the use of the survey results by several groups to show how the United States is lacking in preparing our high school students to compete in the current job market. I also commend you on including a variety of best practices that teachers should look at using when they design a webquest for their classroom. I understand that many colleges today are not including this type of information within their teacher training programs but I believe it is an area that will see expanded growth. Teacher's need the resources and tools in the form of professional development opportunities where they can learn how to create Webquests that can be used to measure their student's progress and learning. I personally have come to rely upon the use of certain Webquests that I use in teaching my high school science courses. I believe that more research needs to be conducted to determine how the best practices actually work in the classroom. The school I currently teach at uses an Apple/Mac program where each high school student has their own laptop along with each teacher having their own laptop. In your research, have you discovered schools that teacher's are adequately prepared to create Webquests and use them? Also are their specific grade levels that Webquests are better designed for or do you think in your research we should be using Webquests with any age group? Thanks for sharing.
Shannon
Shannon,
Thank you for this excellent paper. It is so important for students to not only learn content but to also know how to use the skills necessary for their future in the workplace and to help them to be lifelong learners in the rapidly changing technology available to use. To use your paper to enhance the teaching of students online is really needed and I commend you for your work toward this end.
Peter Conlin
Jennifer,
Webquests are an interesting way of focusing students' attention and thinking towards a single concept. Several years ago I was a facilitator in a class of students that were designing their own webquests. These webquests were then judged at a national level in terms of content, usability and visual appeal. The students in my group did not win any awards, but their knowledge of both the content and computer skills grew tremendously. So that is my only question/suggestion - to examine webquest not so much as a teaching tool but the design and use of as a learning tool as opposed to traditional models. With that said, however, as use as a pure pedagogical tool, it would be interested to compare the Return-On-Investment (to borrow from another field) of training and implementing webquests versus using other technological techniques.
Thank you for sharing such wealth of knowledge through this platform. You have demonstrated passion and the urgency for educators to collaborate in making learning an engaging practice. In same vein, you emphasized passionately the need for learners to eagerly participate in the process.
Your research work further suggested that inasmuch as virtual interaction is critical, physical participation is necessary as well. When these two are in concert, then the purpose which Webquest was designed is enhanced. This enhancement as mentioned in your work is optimized when 42.4% of high school graduates are prepared rather than deficient in the workforce readiness skills-because if 42.4% of high school graduates are unprepared to enter into workforce it is possible that the trend will perpetuate.
I really enjoyed reading your work. It has created awareness and a sense of urgency for educators and learners to embrace participatory approach of learning. It also highlights the need for people to live locally but think globally. I look forward reading more of your work.
J.Ibeh Agbanyim
I think that the Cognitive Load Theory is definitely a concept to understand here. As far as Cognitive Load Theory being use in online instruction, the actual learning and the design of the classroom take place in two separate instances. This means that the online instructor sets up the online classroom before the students begin to take the course. If the online instructor creates instructional materials that inflict too strenuous of a load, then the students may not develop an understanding of the course content. The online instructor should provide materials that are easy to use and follow without presenting too much material at one time when it comes to Cognitive Load Theory. I think you have done this with your work on Webquest 2.0. Nice job!
Dr. Levin-Goldberg,
Thank you for such relevant information. Best practices are foundational for the success of the students as well as the instructor. These WebQuest guidelines are timely in our digital age , thank you!
Please consider the following comments (meant to enhance this manuscript) as follows:
You wrote, "Webquests have been burgeoning in their popularity and utilization within the educational environment. In order to effectively implement a Webquest, best practices must be employed; however, what these best practices are for a Webquest should reflect the exigent 21 st century skills students will need in order to be successful and productive in the global community."
-This sentence needs more clarity. The flow seems disjointed.
You wrote, "However, this author would like to add that the learners be physically interacting online to retrieve the resources. A Webquest cannot appropriately be employed if resources are downloaded by the teacher and then disseminated to the students to read, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. This is no longer a Webquest and should be considered when defining what a Webquest is."
-These sentences need more clarity; they do not seem to be tied together, conveying what is WebQuest. Also, the word physical is misleading; it leaves room for interpretation.
You wrote, "Scrutinizing the definition of Webquests, best practices need to emulate and ally with how to befittingly create eight and utilize them."
-This needs clarity. For instance, what is meant by "create eight and utilize them."
You wrote, "Webquests, if properly created and developed, can be an effective pedagogical tool to facilitate remedying this."
-As I become familiar with WebQuests, I realized that they are also referred as a model of education technology, and they seem to be considered a platform. Please be aware of the word "created" in this sentence, it implies that WebQuests may not be in existence or that there are parts of it, and they need to be put together. If it is meant in the aforementioned sense, the word fits, if not, rewording it may be appropriate. Also, if WebQuests are meant as a platform, then developed may be a better word.
You wrote, "However, students need to be exposed to and practiced in a variety of learning styles in order to foster adaptability."
-Here the word practiced takes away from the clarity of the sentence.
-Also consider level heading vs. seriation when outlining the eight guidelines.
I look forward to the end product, good job!
Genomary Krigbaum, Psy.D.