“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn”: Through WebQuest?

Although there is a controversy about the ownership of the title’s quote, there is no dispute about the meaning that it implicates: learners learn the best when they are involved with the learning process. Regarding pedagogical principles and classroom practices, students can be involved directly into the learning through various means. In this context, I will start with an activity titled: Let's plan for an English Language Club. Here are some screenshots of my activity:

You probably will not be able to read and understand everything from the images. Therefore, if you are curious and want to know more about the task, just click on this link: JannatWebQuestTask

The images here are representing the outlook that will be visible to your students and other interested visitors of your task. If you open an account and want to create a WebQuest of your own, you will see the following view:

 

Creating any task to be of WebQuest's standers is cognitively challenging as you need to think about several interconnected processes, provide justifications for your steps and cross-check and cross-match the standard of your actions with those of WebQuest's ones. But if you have a creative task-based idea and if you can follow the instructions/guidelines provided for preparing and polishing (with images, clip arts, voices etc) an activity, you will be wowed by its mesmerizing implications. And obviously, you will be able to use it multiple times for multi-purposes. 

Now, what do you think of the task? I want you to ponder on the process and outcome of the activity. Does it only require the students to read/listen through the materials and write on them? Or is there anything that is beyond re-production and re-formulation of the processed input? Yes, you’ve got it right! It is the creative, realistic, and practical nature of the task because of which it stands out from the crowd. The successful completion of this task requires the students to create a new framework that can be implemented in real-life academic contexts. Moreover, there is no one-dimensional ‘either individual or group work’ option. The roles are distributed in such a manner that after finishing their individual study, students must collaborate and interact with each other within their groups for developing a final plan. 

As you can see from the pictures, I assigned 4 different roles to 4 students of the group and for the successful completion of the task, they need to go through 5 different stages which demand their actual involvement with the task.

Do you want to get access to this type of activity? Want to create one for your class? Stay with me to learn more about WebQuest. It may appear to you a bit old-fashioned (it really is!) but trust me, it genuinely helps teachers to create and select engaging learning activities.

There is a website named QuestGarden where teachers get an opportunity to create their own WebQuest task or can search and select engaging tasks among thousands of others. We often give students activities that require them only to read and then write on a topic or listen and then speak about something. In this process students’ higher-order thinking skills which demonstrate their ability to analyze, synthesize and evaluate certain issues are not properly addressed. But, as I said, WebQuest can definitely help.

A carefully designed and prudently structured WebQuest can turn out to be a perfect toolbox for teaching containing an amazing amalgamation of constructive knowledge, functional communication, meaningful negotiation, and collaborative interaction in a setting of institutional scaffolding. Here, students’ accumulated information will be modified and transformed into something else while they gradually proceed towards the completion of the task. By being engaged and involved in the activity, students are actually performing a real-life task. So instead of asking your students to write an essay or a paragraph on ‘An English Language Club’, won’t it be more exciting, engaging, and authentic to ask them to form one plan for that?

Okay. I think I have said enough to convince you to be enthusiastic about WebQuesting. Now, as there is no rose without thorns, there are certain downsides of WebQuest. If you want to select any activity from QuestGarden, the loads are probably not that heavy, you just need to be careful of choosing a contextually appropriate and academically feasible activity. However, as I have done here, if you want to create one on your own, firstly, be equipped for troubleshooting certain technical glitches. As this website is an old wizard, my laptop, which is adorned with the most recent updates, was not very supportive in creating my account there and asked me for restarts thrice! Moreover, the creation of a task is quite demanding as you need to invest much of your time and effort in it. And a last one… Yeah! You’re right! It’s not totally free. You can open an account and create and select several activities for free but if you don’t pay afterward, your access to those will expire in one month’s time. The decision is yours.

If you ask my opinion here, I would say it’s worth paying for exploring and utilizing the treasures of the QuestGarden for involving your students in the learning process. So, what are you waiting for!