Defined by Bernie Dogde, a WebQuest is “an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet.”(Source) Using the word ‘learners’, it becomes clear that a WebQuest is mostly used in terms of education and teaching. Learners are supposed to do research on the internet while working on a specific topic. Later on, the results are published on the Internet.

Creating a Webquest

Dodge divides a WebQuest into six different parts:

Introduction

Addressing the introduction to the pupils, in this section, the teacher gives information about the central aspects of the WebQuest. The pupils should be both hooked and prepared for further steps.

Task

Now, the teacher shortly describes what the end result of the learner’s activities will be. Depending on the kind of WebQuest, a task could be a problem or mystery to be solved, a position to be examined and defended, a product to be designed, a summary to be created, or anything that requires the pupils to process and transform the information that they have collected.

Process

The teacher outlines how the work will be done and presents each step to the students. Additional links with background information can be posted here.

Evaluation

Most pupils consider the evaluation of their work as very important and so the teacher should come up with a description of how the pupils will be evaluated.

Conclusion

The conclusion contains a few remarks on what the learners will have achieved. It can also offer some additional links to motivate the pupils to extend their considerations.

Credits and references

A list of all references and sources is provided in this section.

This structure of a WebQuest, given by their ‘inventor’ Bernie Dogde, seems appropriate to me. In my opinion, it is important to give pupils a clear outline of how a WebQuest can be created. WebQuests call for self-contained learning but the teacher should always provide help and further information when it is required.

More information about WebQuests

The following set of links provides general information about WebQuests and WebQuest templates:

http://webquest.org/index.php – A website, which contains a lot of general information as well as examples of WebQuests

http://webquest.sdsu.edu/templates/lesson-template1.htm – A template, which describes the structure of a WebQuest

http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about_webquests.html – Thoughts about WebQuests from Dodge

http://www.lehrer-online.de/webquests-fsu.php – Information about WebQuests in foreign language teaching (German)

http://bestwebquests.com/links.asp – Provides a wide range of links to websites about WebQuests

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