Tuesday, August 18, 2009

WebQuests

I imagine it would be quite time consuming to design such a WebQuest as either 'Antarctic Ice to Water Australia' or 'Freedom Fighter or Terrorist'? Another obstacle would be learning to use some new tools. As Learning Manager you would have to thoroughly research the subject and include as much curriculum material as possible. With either of these WebQuests this could certainly be achieved. The benefit would be that once you have made your WebQuest, most of your work for the term is done. You don't have to be concerned with daily lesson plans or being the main source of information. You can concentrate on coaching your students through the process of critical thinking and inquiry based learning while following a well orchestrated learning experience where transformative learning occurs while facilitating meaningful use of the Web (Tom Marsh, 2003).

WebQuests are designed to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The trick for the Learning Manager is in the task. A good inquiry based task has open ended questions, using clear learning objectives. This would transform the classroom to a collaborative learning environment where hopefully everyone is interested and engaged in the task at hand.

Tomorrow's workers and citizens will need to be able to grapple with ambiguity. They will need to commit themselves to a lifelong process of learning, honoring multiple perspectives and evaluating information before acting on it. Tomorrow's workers and citizens are sitting in our classrooms today.
Using WebQuests in our classrooms can help build a solid foundation that prepares them for the future ( Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2004).

According Professor Ron Oliver, (cited in ICT Learning Design, 2009) his Model suggests beginning the learning design process by designing real-world tasks based around messy, ill-structured problem scenarios. The design of these learning tasks should be sufficiently broad enough to ensure that all learners have sufficient opportunity to engage with the key content areas.The second stage is to identify all of the resources learners will need to successfully complete the tasks. If there are insufficient resources, then these must be created by the course developer.The third stage is to design learner supports so that the learner will be able to successfully complete the tasks. This is generally known as scaffolding using the kinds of tools and interventions that are appropriate to the tasks and audience.
WebQuests are designed so students while working in groups take an active role in solving what ever problem situation they are presented with that are multi layered and messy and this is identified as Problem Based Learning (cqu, 2002).

The WebQuests that are mentioned above look and sound exactly like they were designed to fit this Model.

References:
Educational Broadcasting Corporation (2004). Concept to Classroom, WebQuests. Reteived 18 August 2009 from:
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index.html

Moodle Pilot FAHE 11001 (2009). Managing Elearning, ICT Learning Design. Retreived on 18 August 2009 from:
http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=641

Tom Marsh,The Learning Power of WebQuests (2003). Ozline.com. Retreived on 18 August 2009 from:
http://tommarch.com/writings/wq_power.php

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