WebQuests as a Learning Tool
Introduction
The Internet has an amazing amount of resourses available to learners, but sometimes students can spend hours upon hours trying to find quality resources. As a subject matter expert, you know how to navigate through these resources and find information that is relevant and valuable to students. In 1995, Dr. Bernie Dodge and Tom March in the Department of Educational Technology at San Diego State University developed the idea of WebQuests as a way of sequencing web-based learning activities for students.
"A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web" (Source: Webquest.org).
Blending concepts from inquiry based learning, constructivist learning theory, and cooperative learning, the idea of WebQuest is to sequence learning activities for students.
Read Dr. Bernie Dodge's paper on WebQuests, "Some Thoughts About Webquests." To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must have the following: a deep foundation of factual knowledge, understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application.
