• Why should you use Mini WebQuests?

• Integrate content, culture, and language
• Practice grammar and vocabulary
• Expose students to realia
• Practice communicating and interacting in English
• Makes practice more authentic, less artificial
• Motivate students
• Complement traditional classroom instruction, not replace it
• Easy-to-use CALL application

• What is a Mini WebQuest?

• Find information
• Answer questions
• Make choices or decisions
• No one right answer
• Short term

• How can you make Mini WebQuests?

• Identify your goals/linguistic focus

• grammar
• vocabulary
• theme/content

• Find appropriate web sites

• limited language
• visuals
• interaction, dynamic content, audio, video
• sites they will want to return to:

• Write questions

• elicit target grammar
• use higher-level thinking skills
• list steps
• include interactive element
• Post to the message board

• Use a Bravenet Message Board

• Use the <a> html tag

Mini WebQuests and Higher-Level Thinking

The knowledge category involves students retelling new content. Questions at this level are factual and specific. A Mini WebQuest at this level would ask students to visit a web site and report what they have learned on the message board.

The next highest level is organizing, which asks students to compare, classify, and order new information so it can be understood. Students might complete a Mini WebQuest where they explore two similar topics and compare them, or compare what they have learned on the Internet to what they have learned in the classroom.

This is followed by the applying level, where students apply previous learning to a new situation. This is ideally suited for Mini WebQuests, where students can apply the language and content they were taught by the teacher to a problem based on an online source.

Analyzing gives students an opportunity to identify components and cause and effect or hierarchical relationships. They examine parts and relationships, compare and contrast, and may take a certain perspective. A Mini WebQuest at this level might ask students to find information on a web site that will give evidence for a social phenomenon.

The next highest level is generating, which includes predicting, elaborating, and producing new information, meanings, or ideas. At this thinking level, a Mini WebQuest might ask students to make a new invention or design or solve a current or past problem.

The integrating level asks students to incorporate new information into prior knowledge. This is different from applying in that at this level students can condense information and discard what is unimportant or trivial. They change their existing knowledge structures to incorporate the new information they have learned. A Mini WebQuest at this high level might ask students to find new information on a web site and give their understanding of a topic.

At the highest level, evaluating, students judge a value or logic, or confirm or disprove a belief. They can assess the quality of something and whether or not it is reasonable. A Mini WebQuest that this level might ask students to identify the most significant elements and explain the criteria they used to come to their conclusion.

Several findings about the cognitive level of teachers’ questions are useful to consider when writing Mini WebQuest questions. Lower cognitive questions are found more effective with younger learners. For secondary and adult students, increasing the higher level questions used in instruction to above 20 percent produces superior learning gains.

Studies have also found that frequent use of higher cognitive questions leads to increased length of student responses, increased student use of complete sentences, more relevant questions and contributions by students, and increased student-to-student interactions. Including higher-level questions which require students to mentally manipulate new information as well as information previously learned to create an answer in a Mini WebQuest can have a positive effect on students’ language learning.
 
 

Mini WebQuests and Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner describes seven intelligences that have been determined based on cognitive research: Verbal-Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Visual-Spatial, Musical, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal. The key to effective education is to harness and take advantage of these natural strengths when teaching new skills. Mini WebQuests can engage students with strengths in several of these areas.

Classroom instruction usually leans towards certain learning style dimensions. The teacher’s teaching style may or may not match the learning styles of the students and rarely meets the needs of the all students. Mini WebQuests can help fill this gap by giving students the necessary practice in their preferred media. Activities can be designed to offer alternate modes of instruction such as written, aural, or graphic.

People with Verbal-Linguistic intelligence think in words, primarily spoken but also written. They have a great capacity to use world effectively. These people master new information most effectively by listening, reading, and verbalizing. Mini WebQuests that lead students to web sites that include audio as well as text can help address the needs of these students.

Students who have strong Visual-Spatial intelligence learn best by recognizing patterns and perceiving the visual world accurately and are able to transform, modify, and recreate things they see. They need to have visual input to learn new material. They may have difficulty in a conversation class where the material is not explicitly written down. These learners can benefit from interacting with others in a style similar to that of spoken language but presented in a visual form on a message board before or after the oral conversation in class. The set of icons that are available with most message board programs are also a valuable device for visual-spatial learners.

People with Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence are talented at using fine and gross motor movements to work with objects. They often need to "act out" what they are learning. Keyboarding and mousing are dependent on hand-eye coordination. This physical activity of typing or manipulating the mouse or other pointing device makes the Bodily-Kinesthetically intelligent student an active participant in the learning process.

Interpersonal learners learn best when they can understand the relationships between people and how to use this information. Students with this intelligence like to socialize and learn best by interacting and cooperating with or teaching other people. They will benefit from Mini WebQuests because when posted to the message board, their writing is not a private thing, or something to be shared only with the teacher, but rather a means to communicate and share their ideas with their classmates or the world.

Students whose strength lies in intrapersonal intelligence have a strength in identifying and using their own emotions. They learn best by linking their responses to new information and monitoring their reactions to plan a future course of study. These students have a great capacity for self-discipline. These students need their own quiet space and learn more easily with independent study and self-paced instruction. Completing a Mini WebQuest independently on their own time can be an effective way for them to practice and master new structures.

The use of a variety of learning activities including Mini WebQuests can help teachers to meet the varied learning needs and styles of their students.
 
 

Further Reading

http://www.ozline.com/webquests/design.html

How to design a full-fledged WebQuest
 

Steps to Creating a WebQuest, Judy Lambert

http://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/project/middletech/lambert/TIME/webquests/introduction.html

A teacher inservice presentation based on Tom March’s article
 

WebQuest Taskonomy: A Taxonomy of Tasks, Bernie Dodge

http://webquest.sdsu.edu/taskonomy.html

An overview of different tasks you can include in a WebQuest
 

Teaching Writing Using a Bulletin Board on the Internet: A Preliminary Study, Soyoung Lee

English Teaching, Volume 55, Nunber 3, Fall 2000

Report on a study using a computer bulletin board to teach writing to Korean students
 

Thinking Skill Levels - Adapted from Marzano for North Carolina Curriculum

http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/Houghton/Learner/Think94/NCmarzanoThink.html

An introduction to thinking level skills
 

Classroom Questioning, Kathleen Cotton

http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/3/cu5.html

How to use questioning to elicit higher cognitive levels
 

Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983) and Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice (1992), Howard Gardner

New York: Basic Books

Gardner’s explanation of multiple intelligences
 

How Technology Enhances Howard Gardner’s Eight Intelligences, Dee Dickinson

http://www.america-tomorrow.com/ati/nhl80402.htm

Using technology to address students’ intelligences
 

The Role of Styles and Strategies in Second Language Learning. Rebecca Oxford

http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed317087.html

Why learning styles are important for language teaching and learning
 

Language Learning Strategies: An Update, Rebecca Oxford

http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed376707.html

More recent findings on learning strategies
 
 

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