Related Literature About Webquests For Ells

By Author: Amandda
Total Articles: 59
Comment this article

Although there have been numerous publications about WebQuests in the last few years, the majority have been either conceptual or descriptive (Halat, 2008; Kahl & Berg, 2006; Lacina, 2007; Wood, Quitadamo, DePaepe, & Loverro, 2007). Although a few publications have provided tips for designing effective WebQuests, they have focused on the technical rather than curricular aspects of design (Lipscomb, 2003; MacGregor & Lou, 2004). One exception is Ikpeze and Boyd's (2007) analysis of a WebQuest on the environment. The authors focused on technical as well as curricular aspects by observing and responding to six 5th graders as they worked through the WebQuest. They identified the extent of students' distractibility, information overload, and difficulty of navigation between WebQuests and website resources. Ikpeze and Boyd recognized that skills related to Internet use needed to be integrated Tag Heuer Replica into the WebQuest unit; they added instruction in comprehension strategies, such as chunking, skimming, and scanning Internet texts, as they revised the ...
... WebQuest. Another feature Ikpeze and Boyd added was students' evaluation of the quality of the websites they encountered and the sources they included. Students were asked to consider sources, their date of publication, and the authors' purposes. Finally, Ikpeze and Boyd suggested that teachers preview links to other websites before including them as resources when designing their own WebQuests.

Perkins and McKnight (2005) also urged teachers to evaluate the WebQuests' curricular elements before using them in the classroom. In a survey study examining the perceptions of K—12 teachers, teacher-educators, and school district administrators about WebQuests as an instructional strategy, Perkins and McKnight found that teachers expressed disappointment over the general quality of the WebQuests; they were especially critical toward rote tasks and complained about numerous errors and a general lack of planning. Similarly, Orme and Monroe's (2005) study of mathematics WebQuests also supports the need for more challenging tasks. They found that WebQuest tasks with embedded mathematical concepts produced more in-depth discussions among the students than tasks that focused solely on practicing procedural mathematical knowledge (Orme & Monroe, 2005).
Several researchers have also discussed how websites reinforce or resist mainstream cultural perspectives (Gorski, 2004; Warschauer, Knobel, & Stone, 2004), or reflect predominantly Anglo and middle class perspectives (Weeks, 2005). In fact, Weeks found that WebQuests generally avoided activities Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watches that encouraged discussion of race and ethnicity. Weeks also pointed out that resources for designing WebQuests were either not readily available for teachers or were often inadequate, including the rubrics recommended by March (2008) and Dodge (2001). None of the sources we retrieved addressed the development of WebQuests for ELLs. Both Ikpeze and Boyd's (2007) and Orme and Monroe's (2005) studies, for example, focused on "mainstream"—native-English speaking, Anglo—elementary students.