Oh, the possibilities: Explore more possibilities with WebQuests!

Have you ever heard of WebQuest?

It's been in existence for a long time. It has been well proven and has accumulated many resources that you can use or learn from. But at the same time, it has never stopped innovating, following in the footsteps of a new era!

• WebQuest is an engaging and efficient approach for students to make the most of the web-based resources provided.

• By completing the interesting tasks set by the designer, students practise high-level thinking skills such as synthesis, analysis, problem-solving, creativity, and judgement.

• Faced with a real-life, tangentially relevant subject, students are more interested, active, and stimulated to explore. If you find that your students lack energy and interest in your courses, try WebQuest!

Today I will present a great WebQuest: Oh, the possibilities! 💖

🐧 Page composition

The student page has six sections.

• Introduction

This section gives a brief introduction to the topic: planning a language-learning trip.

• Task

The task section introduces the main requirements of the task, which is for students to choose one of six cities in the UK, USA, or Ireland and develop a detailed plan of travel activities.

• Process

The process section details the specific steps involved, including choosing a destination, identifying information on transport, accommodation, activities, and finances, and preparing the final written and oral reports required.

• Evaluation

The evaluation section details how the exploration process is assessed in terms of collaboration, written and oral reports, creativity, and overall impressions.

• Conclusion

The conclusion section elicits a summary and feedback from students on what they have learned and leads them to think about extended applications.

• Credits

The credits section clarifies sources of inspiration and author biographies.

🐧 Strengths

• Motivation

This WebQuest is certainly engaging!

As an ELF student, who doesn't have a dream of travelling to an English-speaking country to discover the culture behind the language? Not to mention immersive learning and experiencing culture while travelling.

• Culture

Students are required to find popular and interesting cultural activities, inspiring creativity in the process. Students' curiosity about different countries also drives their enthusiasm for language learning to a great extent.

• Roles

The activities were conducted in small groups, with each group being assigned the role of everyone, including transportation expert, accommodation expert, activities expert, and financial expert. Each role is fully guided and scaffolded by clues, outlines, and effective website sources.

• Groupwork

Although everyone has a clear division of labour, they all need to work together to complete the final project, which allows for communication and collaboration skills to be practised in small groups.

• Reading, writing, speaking, thinking

By visiting different websites for information, students' reading skills of filtering and integrating information are improved. Such reading is also more enjoyable than traditional paper exercises. Written reports, which are based on real-life situations, are practical and of great use. The oral presentations also develop speaking and stage presence skills. The process of developing a plan requires constant sifting, comparing, and analysing of strengths and weaknesses, which develops high-level thinking skills.

• Autonomy

Students are motivated to seek knowledge instead of being pushed by the teacher to learn a particular point, which increases their autonomy in learning the language.

• Evaluation

Students can self-evaluate or peer-evaluate their performance after completing the task, using the assessment form provided to summarise their experience.

 

🐧 Weaknesses

• Deficiencies in the teacher page

A WebQuest typically has access to a student page and a teacher page, giving guidance and reminders to students and teachers respectively. The teacher page of ‘Oh, the possibilities’ does not seem to be very well developed and is mostly blank. Fortunately, the student page is detailed and includes almost all the information that teachers need to know. The lack of a teacher page does not affect the smooth development of this WebQuest.

 

• Too much information

The information covered in the task is so extensive and dense that it can be considered a huge undertaking. This leads to the fact that this task may be more suitable for more advanced students in middle and high school, where younger students might have difficulty understanding it or find it overwhelming. However, this situation can be well resolved by extending the duration of the task and refining the steps, giving them adequate time to understand and learn.

 

• Different cultural backgrounds

In this WebQuest, ELF students might be exposed to these cities and cultures for the first time. They may not know much about the cultural context and lack a certain amount of background knowledge. But that is one of the aims of this activity: to learn about different cultures and traditions as they integrate information and gather data.

 

If you would like to try out more WebQuests, click here to see more highlights.

Oh, you say you want to try creating your own fun WebQuests! Of course, you can! This video below can be a better guide.

And finally, if you've made a wonderful discovery or tried something new, feel free to share your feelings in the comments!💖

Image source: screenshots from WebQuest by Kerry Ann McKevitt (click)

Video source: video by Danielle Matzick via YouTube (click)