Web2Quests (Web 2.0 WebQuests)
Serhat Kurt, PhD
Ataturk University
Kazim Karabekir Education Faculty
Yoncalik Yerleskesi
Erzurum, 25100, Turkey
[email protected]
Abstract
This papers describes the process of creating Web 2.0 based WebQuests. It also discusses students’ responses to it. The Web 2.0 WebQuest has three defining features (1) Web 2.0 design style (2) integration of Web 2 services and trends such as blogs, social networking sites and wikis (3) use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS). In one class, my students and I created regular WebQuests and Web 2.0 based WebQuests. In another class, my students and I used these WebQuests. Data were collected from both classes through interviews and observations. Results indicated that while students enjoyed the WebQuest activity, the responses from the Web 2.0 style groups were more positive. Introduction
The Web has brought new possibilities for teaching and learning. WebQuests are among the most used methods by K-16 educators as a strategy for integrating the Web into classroom instruction. The WebQuest technique was created by Bernie Dodge in 1995 with early input from Tom March. A WebQuest can be defined as “an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet” (Dodge, 1997). This technique usually requires students to work in groups and heavily relies on information sources on the Web. Students are guided to visit appropriate web resources to look for information. A WebQuest usually includes six steps: (a) the introduction; background information about a topic that learners will explore (b) the task; a general description of what learners are required to do (c) information sources; mostly web sites for students to investigate to complete the task (d) a description of the process; a step by step description for learners to follow (e) evaluation; includes evaluation criteria for students’ works and (f) the
conclusion; a summary of the experience. WebQuests can be a short term (one to three class periods) or a long term (one week to a month) activity and usually require group work. Furthermore, WebQuests can be designed within a single discipline or be interdisciplinary (Dodge, 1997).
The WebQuest method has been widely adopted in K-16 education (Zheng et al, 2008). One important point to mention is that while being applied to a wide variety of different educational settings, the WebQuest technique has changed little (Abbit & Ophus, 2008). Since the creation of WebQuests, however, the Web has changed a lot, shifting from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Web 1.0 was the first and Web 2.0 is the next phase of the Internet. Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 differ on how they present information. Although Web 1.0 was mostly about retrieving information, Web 2.0 represents a more collaborative, interactive, and user-focused approach.
Coombs (2007) states that Web 2.0 is ‘transforming the Web into a space that allows anyone to create and share information online-a space for collaboration, conversation, and interaction; a space that is highly dynamic, flexible, and adaptable’ (p. 17). Web users are now easily building pages, sharing photos and videos, and interacting with each other. These users are generating most of the content by uploading videos, pictures and other media, participating in discussions (for instance leaving comments on others’ writings, videos, pictures), and writing (blogging, wikis etc). This is why many call Web 2.0 a more user-powered and democratic approach than Web 1.0.
With Web 2.0, a new design style was also introduced. This style is a more simplistic approach. In this style, special attention is given to usability; making web site designs easy to browse for Internet users. This includes presenting information in a clear way and not causing confusion for the users. Presenting content is very
straightforward. Users do not spend time trying to find what they are looking for from complicated web site layouts. Usually, in this layout, there is content centered in 1 or 2 columns, large texts, plenty of white space to direct attention to the content, fewer graphics but more small icons and solid areas of different content sections.
Research studies indicate that a large portion of the young population (under 20 years old) use Web 2.0 sites such as social networking (e.g. facebook.com, myspace.com etc.) or video/photo sharing sites (e.g.
youtube.com, flickr.com etc.) (Balci & Ayhan, 2007; BECTA, 2008; Pew Internet, 2007). Kurt (2009, p. 36) argued that:
Most of the WebQuests, if not all, could be found to carry very basic characteristics of Web 1.0 in terms of functionality and design. These WebQuests do not interact with the learners. One of the major weaknesses of the WebQuests is that the design structure of this method is not interactive with learners. Interactivity here means the extent to which learners can actively participate in the process and collaborate with other learners. That means this technique heavily relies on written content. It does not fully take advantage of current Web technologies which may increase interactivity and learners’ engagement dramatically. WebQuests should embrace the benefits of Web 2.0 in order to engage today’s learners with the information we introduce through this method.
Thus if we created a WebQuest based on Web 2.0, would that be more effective than using a traditional WebQuest as a teaching method?
Methods
To create Web 2.0 WebQuests, we employed Blog and Wiki software and services to create our Web 2.0 Web Quests. Blogs and Wikis were used to accomplish many things such as increasing collaborations and discussions among students, adding many dynamic features such as polls, video and picture galleries, discussion boards etc. and monitoring students’ activities by employing history features. Another advantage of using blogs and wikis as a basis for our WebQuests was that they simplified the design aspects of this technique by making use of templates, which are pre-developed web site page layouts. Furthermore, we used Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase the effectiveness of the WebQuests we created. Via RSS, we syndicated content from other such sites as Youtube.com. RSS also enabled us to create automatically updating WebQuests.
I teach two educational technology courses and one of the important topics in these courses is the
WebQuest technique. One class is called Computer Literacy and the other one is called Educational Technology and Material Design. In computer literacy, I teach WebQuests as a technique. In the other class, my students and I try to create different educational technology materials from PowerPoint to web sites. We also create WebQuests. In this class, we tried to create Web 2.0 based WebQuests. We tried to create a more dynamic and user-focused WebQuest with the help of the Web 2.0 tools and services described in this paper. Our Web 2.0 WebQuest has three distinctive features different from the traditional WebQuests: (a) Web 2.0 WebQuests carry the characteristics of Web 2.0 design styles (Scratchmedia Limited, 2009; Chang, 2006) (b) Web 2.0 WebQuests include many such dynamic features as searching, commenting, discussion boards etc. (c) Using RSS to syndicate content from related Web sites.
Creation of Web 2.0 WebQuests
I randomly divided my students into five groups. Each group consisted of 7-8 students. Each group was required to create two versions of a short term WebQuest; (a) a Web 2.0 WebQuest (b) and a traditional style WebQuest. For the Web 2.0 WebQuest, each group used WordPress blogging software to create their WebQuest. WordPress is the most popular blogging system today (W3techs, 2010). One distinctive feature of WordPress is that WordPress can run multiple blogs from one installation of WordPress. This feature let us easily create multiple
templates found at http://webquest.org/index-create.php. Since I taught these students Computer literacy previously, they knew how to design simple Web sites.
I also established a separate Wiki page for students’ discussions for each WebQuest. Each student was required to write what he/she was doing and respond or comment about others’ Wiki entries. More specifically, Wiki was used to help students to manage and organize information, share resources and discuss their work during the creation of the WebQuest activities. I closely followed the Wiki pages to monitor students’ activities. Wikis have a history feature, this means that whenever there is a change, Wiki saves the before and after version of the change. This was a useful feature to follow students’ progress.
WordPress has numerous themes; pre-designed web site layouts. A majority of them are designed by professionals and their licenses are suitable for educational use. These themes can be found at
/wordpress.org/extend/themes/. This means that students were easily able to change the look of their WebQuests. Furthermore, the features of WordPress can drastically be increased by using their plugins found at
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/. Students were free to use whatever themes or plugins they like to achieve what they want in their WebQuests.
Data Collection
Data were collected from my Computer Literacy class students and Educational Technology and Material Design class students. As I stated above, the WebQuests were created in my Educational Technology and Material Design class. Then, I used these new Web 2.0 WebQuests and the original style WebQuests to teach the WebQuest technique in my other class, Computer Literacy. Data collection included unstructured observations and interviews. I conducted unstructured interviews with 10 students (5 students from the Computer Literacy group and 5 students from the Educational Technology and Material Design group). These students were randomly selected. All the interviews took place in a private room. Each interview lasted around 15 minutes, and a tape recorder was used to record the interviews. Thereafter, the data was transcribed and analyzed. Each interview was independently examined. This examination included coding then, determining subcategories, and finding emerging themes and issues. In general, I wanted to learn about the students overall perceptions about the WebQuest technique and experiences using or creating WebQuests.
In general, the interviews suggested that although students’ from both classes enjoyed the WebQuest activities, students’ responses to the Web 2.0 style WebQuest were more positive. Here are some responses:
Student from Computer Literacy Class: I liked both versions of the WebQuests, but I think the Web 2.0 WebQuests offered more interactivity. I enjoyed that we were able to do many things on Web 2.0 WebQuests like adding our comments and participating in polls.
Student from Educational Technology and Material Design class: During the creation of these WebQuests, Web 2.0 style WebQuests offered more flexibility. We could add any functionality we wanted. The difficult part was that we created this Web 2.0 WebQuest, and then were required to create the same WebQuest using basic HTML [referring to traditional WebQuest]. That was impossible to do. We only did it partly because Web 2.0 WebQuests have so many features that we could not accomplish in our traditional style WebQuest.
Student from Educational Technology and Material Design class: We were able to finish our Web 2.0 WebQuests much faster than the traditional WebQuests. Our Web 2.0 WebQuests look more
professional than our traditional WebQuests.
Many of them stated that they liked how it looked and they liked the features available more than the other, traditional, WebQuest. I also observed that students using this new WebQuest were more focused, created more discussions, and produced more groups’ thoughts in the WebQuest activities than the traditional WebQuest. Furthermore, in the Web 2.0 WebQuest’s Wiki pages, there were a lot more activity than in the traditional style WebQuest Wiki pages.
Discussion and Conclusion
This paper describes how my students and I created Web 2.0 based WebQuests. There are numerous studies examining the impact of WebQuests on students’ learning (for a review of studies, see Abbit & Ophus, 2008). Yet, there is little knowledge of the factors affecting a WebQuest’s success or failure. However, it seems that Web 2.0 style may have an influence on a WebQuest’s effectiveness. There are many reasons that Web 2.0 styles WebQuests are potentially more effective. More comprehensive studies for all grade levels are required in order to conclude that Web 2.0 WebQuests are more effective.
WebQuest is a Web based technique. This means that special attention should be given to Web
accessibility. Current WebQuests are known to have substandard design elements (Kurt, 2009).This means that they lack many accessibility standards. From this experience, we learned Web 2.0 WebQuests were more accessible than traditional WebQuests because students employed WordPress themes. These themes are designed by professional
One important point to mention is the importance of security when designing Web 2.0 WebQuests. As I stated we used WordPress software to build our Web 2.0 WebQuests. Since WordPress is a very popular tool, millions of Web sites are using this software. This popularity means that individuals who want to make trouble try to find ways to crack into accounts or sites to cause damage. To prevent any damage, keeping your WordPress installation, including the plugins up-to-date is essential.
References
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