This is part 1 of a three-part series about SOLEs. (see also Part 2 and Part 3)
What is a webquest?
The webquest was developed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March while they were teaching at San Diego State University in 1995. A webquest is "is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students’ investigation of an open-ended question" (Tom March).
A few days ago, I was chatting to Anne Fox about webquests and she commented that she felt the webquest was dying. The leading proponents of the model seem to have stopped writing/talking about it and fewer teachers were interested in doing them. So, if not exactly dying, webquests do seem to be fading in popularity, and why has the SOLE (Self-Organised Learning Environment), which some commentators feel is just a variation of the webquest, become more popular?
What is a webquest?The webquest was developed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March while they were teaching at San Diego State University in 1995. A webquest is "is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students’ investigation of an open-ended question" (Tom March).
The webquest model is very structured, with a number of key features for webquest designers to keep in mind and templates for teachers to use. A dedicated site, Questgarden was launched to make it easier for teachers to prepare webquests using this model.
What a webquest isn't
The term webquest has become much used and abused during the years. I have heard teachers say they are going to do a webquest with their students when it was clear they were simply going to the computer room to ask the students to look for some information about a particular subject.
The term webquest has become much used and abused during the years. I have heard teachers say they are going to do a webquest with their students when it was clear they were simply going to the computer room to ask the students to look for some information about a particular subject.
Another activity often called a webquest by teachers is the popular Internet treasure hunt (or scavenger hunt) activity, that was popular in ELT when the Internet was first used by teachers. Usually, this consisted of a series of questions that students had to find quickly. They were usually questions that students could find easily (e.g. What is the weather like in Barcelona today?)
Mini-Webquests
Teachers who didn't want the structure imposed by the webquest model have always done their own versions of "webquests". One way of describing these is to use the term used by Tom Walton, 'mini-webquest'. His suggestion involves the students using the Internet to research a topic together (perhaps having a discussion or debate about it beforehand) and then giving a presentation afterwards. This looser form, which uses learner-generated questions, is a move towards the SOLE model, except perhaps that it is aimed at adult learners rather than the younger learners Sugata Mitra has in mind.
The decline of the webquest
When you go to "the most complete and current source of information about the WebQuest Model" it is telling that the section 'latest news' was last update in 2008. Why is this? Well, the webquest model was very much based on the Web as it was (Web 1.0), when the analogy was often made of the Web as a massive online library of static pages to be consulted, and not the Web as it is (Web 2.0 or the social web), which has seen far more interaction and content creation than was possible before.
So, with webquests declining in popularity, what is occupying their place?
Anne feels that webquests are being replaced by teachers conducting enquiry-based learning built around essential questions (very much like the SOLE model promoted by Sugata Mitra), with the teacher acting more as a facilitator/coach than in the standard webquest model. The post-webquest models are similar in some ways, but seem to be less structured and encourage more learner autonomy.
Further Reading
- Dodge (1995) Some thoughts about webquests
- Dudeney & Hockley (2004) Webquests, TeachingEnglish
- Godwin-Jones (2004) From Webquests to Virtual Reality, LLT Vol 8. No.3
- March (20034) What webquests (really) are
- Mora, (2012) implementing webquests in the context of ELT
- Morgana, (2012) Using webquests in teenage classes
- Webquests.org - the home of the webquest model
- Webquests - in Using ICT - >Key Concepts of ELT
ELT Webquests
