Two WebQuest Sites - Essay Example

The latter part synthesizes learnings, serves up reminders of the lessons from the exercise, and provides a way forward for further investigations into the topic of WebQuest. Other components that can enhance but are not essential to WebQuest, according to Dodge, are making WebQuest either single-discipline-focused or multiple-disciplines-focused; incorporating elements to motivate participants; and incorporation of group activities (Dodge).

Question 2: Looking at actual WebQuests, it is clear that the outline provided by Dodge has been useful in defining the parameters of such exercises, and from their widespread adoption it can be said that the format of the WebQuest had been instrumental in its efficacy as a teaching and learning protocol/strategy/program/plan. There is a high level of uniformity in the adoption of the critical elements in many of the WebQuests that I encountered for this exercise, except a few that also incorporated Teacher Advice and Credits sections on top of the key elements of the Introduction, Tasks, Process, Evaluation, and Conclusion. The Teacher Advice section seems to be helpful in theory, as far as providing additional, but important notes that Teachers can refer to when making use of WebQuest, to enhance learning outcomes )(Dodge; Rogers; Creech; Smith-Rios).
Two WebQuest Sites

A. Happily Ever After or Not (Rogers)

a. WebQuest focuses on the use of the Web to find out differing versions of Cinderella in different parts of the world, designed to develop critical and analytical skills among students as they navigate through the process and prescribed references/steps. The WebQuest states that this is appropriate for a Language Arts class in Sixth Grade (Rogers)
b. The students were made to go through several sources to help them develop an understanding of how to research and compare varying versions of the Cinderella story. The directions are clear and well-laid out, and further substantiated by the requirements in the Evaluation Criteria (Rogers)
c. The color scheme invokes feminine elements appropriate for Cinderella. The site is simple and easy to navigate, but relatively more beautiful compared to the other sites that I examined, which were even simpler (Rogers)
B. Coyote the Trickster (Smith-Rios)

a. The WebQuest is about comparing coyote trickster stories in literature, and then researching real-life coyotes, and then comparing real-life coyotes with the coyote trickster character in the stories/myths. There is no data on the appropriate grade level audience and subject for the WebQuest (Smith-Rios)
b. The tasks include making a video commercial, which is a notch higher in difficulty in comparison to the actual Web research, whose steps are very well laid-out. (Smith-Rios)
c. The individual elements are encased in their web pages, and all pages have links to every other page, which makes it easily navigable. On the other hand, the presentation overall is too plain and can be improved (Smith-Rios). Read More