5th and 6th Week

Webquests: Inquiry Based Learning?

In these two weeks, we have been discussing webquests. A number of issues came up as to their true benefit. I have found students to enjoy the webquest format. They have always seemed engaged and most of the time they have complete the task without much prompting. It was mentioned that for some high school kids that the assignments were boring. One idea to improve this was by having students add their own questions. I’m not sure this shouldn’t happen regardless of the format of the activity, but I can see that it might have to be done in a more formal manner. Another question that arose was addressing learning styles. For this scenario a student had an idea of using more than one webquest for one topic. That way you could address varying learning styles. This was an excellent idea, and it is one area of material development that often gets limited attention.

I think the idea of using a webquests without student input is nothing more than busy work as someone mentioned, but if it is planned out in a thoughtful manner with the additions some of the people have mentioned, I think it can be an engaging inquiry based type of lesson. This was a great week of learning and reflecting on the how, when, and why of using webquests, and by using the thought processes that have been mentioned concerning areas of developing a lesson, I can improve my lessons regardless of their format.


Don Bates