implementing and learning about webquests in the ...

IMPLEMENTING AND LEARNING ABOUT WEBQUESTS IN THE CONTEXT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION: THE EXPERIENCE AT A COLOMBIAN UNIVERSITY Raúl Alberto Mora1, Juan Diego Martínez2, Laura Mildrey Zapata-Monsalve3, Liliana Alzate-Pérez4, Raúl Gómez-Yepes5 1,2

Facultad de Educación, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellín (COLOMBIA) 3,4,5 Licenciatura en Inglés-Español, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellín (COLOMBIA) [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract This paper presents the experiences of two professors and three of their students while implementing the use of WebQuests within a preservice English methods component at a Colombian university. Given its inquiry-based nature, WebQuests became a feasible alternative to merge several elements present within the curricular transformation of the English teacher education program, including the emphasis on technology learning, critical thinking, competences, and socio-cultural learning frameworks. The paper will discuss the implementation process from the perspectives of how the instructors devised the component and how the students created their own WebQuests. The paper will also discuss some of the students’ reflections about the implementation of the activity and what it means for prospective teachers. Finally, all authors will reflect on the present and future challenges while they continue doing curricular and research work on WebQuest implementation. Keywords: WebQuests, English Education, ELT, technology mediation, critical thinking, Colombia.

1

INTRODUCTION

The field of English Language Teaching (ELT) has become increasingly interested in the inclusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for different instructional purposes, including teacher education [1], [2]. This interest in ICTs is also part of a larger societal interest in sharing people’s ideas, writing, and artistic expressions with a much broader global audience [3]. As these interests converge, there is a push within schools to increase the number of technology and computerbased activities [4], which includes both allocating more resources in the form of computer labs and having teachers schedule visits to conduct classroom activities. However, without meaningful activities and proposals for teachers, the visit to the computer lab oftentimes underutilizes this resource. Sometimes the activities that students do in the classroom do not go further than some fact-finding TM TM hunt through Google or Wikipedia . The outcome of the task, besides the mere information search exercise, is usually a written report, where there is always the risk that student will do nothing but copy and paste information or answer a few questions. We find these kinds of activities worrisome for two main reasons. First, computer lab activities that are solely based on information searching might not be engaging enough for students. Given the kinds of information to which today’s students are exposed, just asking them to write a report will not do enough to promote the skills they are already bringing to the table, including their ability to multi-task. Second, the aforementioned copy-and-paste outcome raises questions about the use of resources, as well as the even larger risks of plagiarism [5] and copyright violations [6] that could arise from a computer lab activity without the proper guidance. As teachers and teacher educators, we have a great responsibility to provide our students with ethical codes for the use of information online. Fostering activities that may encourage them to break said codes does a disservice for the calls for creativity and innovation within the internet community. In the particular context of English language teacher education, teacher educators and researchers are expanding the frameworks for teacher preparation. On the one hand, there is an interest to expand the image of teachers beyond “passive technicians” [7] into more reflective individuals who rethink and reshape their practice. On the other, the range of concepts that permeate teacher education methods courses include ideas such as social constructivism [8], [9], competences [10], communicative tasks [11], [12], and technology mediation [13], to name a few. Today’s view of preservice English courses has transcended from mere language-learning courses to a space where students will reinforce their

Proceedings of INTED2012 Conference. 5th-7th March 2012, Valencia, Spain.

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ISBN: 978-84-615-5563-5

language skills while learning key ideas and practices that will help them become better teachers. ELT teacher educators are more concerned today about what kind of teachers we are preparing and with which tools we are providing them for their practice. This is the overall background that informs this paper. In this paper, we, two teacher educators and 1 three students will discuss our experiences implementing WebQuests [14], [15], [16] in the context of the preservice English methods component “Communicative Competence III” at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB), in Medellín. This paper will explain how the professors (Raúl and Juan Diego) chose WebQuests as a viable project for the component and what the students (Laura, Liliana, and Raúl) did to create their own WebQuests. We will talk about the conceptual underpinnings for the component, both in the larger institutional context and the confines of our work in the classroom. This paper is, thus, the result of a collective reflexivity [17], [18] exercise among all authors. All authors made valuable contributions to this paper and all of our reflections raised important issues about teacher education, literacy, and technology. We have gradually moved from being instructors and students to seeing ourselves as colleagues and co-researchers, thus helping break the traditional hierarchies that sometimes permeate research groups [19]. In the spirit of the work we conducted with the students in class, we have posed the following questions to guide our ideas in this paper: 1. Why are WebQuests a valid proposal in the context of preservice English education? 2. What did a group of teachers and students do in order to implement WebQuests as part of the curriculum of a preservice English methods component? 3. What are the implications of the implementation of WebQuests for the field of ELT?

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WHAT ARE WEBQUESTS?

Before we begin the larger discussion of what we did in class, it would be beneficial to discuss the idea of WebQuests. WebQuests, an internet-based, “inquiry-oriented” [14] activity, was first created by Professor Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in the late 1990s. March [15] defined them as a “scaffolded learning structure that uses the links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students’ investigation” (p. 42). Mora [20] defined them as “an interesting educational project that intends to combine content areas, technology, and the use of the Internet for a more comprehensive educational experience.” Most authors who have explored WebQuests agree that student engagement and the use of real sources from the internet are the two main hallmarks of this activity. Vidoni and Maddux [21] argued that “WebQuests challenge student intellectual and academic ability rather than web searching skills” (p. 103). In this regard, WebQuests become a very beneficial activity because, when well designed, they involve students in more active learning styles. In addition, they help them learn what good information and quality sources look like and enable the teacher to find other creative ways to use his/her expertise. Finally, as March [15] claimed, WebQuests involve “participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding” (p. 42)

2.1 Sections of a WebQuest A well-designed WebQuest, as most authors agree, should include six elements. First, there is the introduction to the WebQuest, where teachers write an engaging statement to get students acquainted with the overall themes that the WebQuest will develop. The introduction can feature a historical background, factual information about the theme, or other ideas that help students learn what they will be doing later. After the introduction, there is a description of the main task that students (in teams; WebQuests were not designed for students to complete them either independently or individually) have to work on in order to complete the WebQuest. The most common configuration for the task is for each student to take on a role “that helps a team of learners investigate an issue from more specialized perspectives” [15]. The task must describe what they will do and what the end product will look like. Once the task is set, students will begin to work on the different steps and activities that will ultimately lead them to complete the task. Each of these steps will appear on the process page. Each of the steps of the process should combine individual work moments with group 1

There were four students in the component. Unfortunately, one of them was unable to help write the paper due to personal matters.

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meetings to share and discuss their findings. Also, each step must include looking for information in carefully-selected websites. These websites comprise the resources for the WebQuests. Although one can have a separate page for them, it is customary to embed all the resources in the process page. However, in the case of English Language Learners [22], where additional language support resources are both necessary and important, it is up to the teacher to place these resources within the process page or have them in a separate page. There should be another page devoted to the evaluation of the WebQuest. For this evaluation, students need to create a rubric [23], [24] for the different features they intend to check in their students’ production for the task. Finally, there is the conclusion page. In this page, the teacher will write some final words to highlight the accomplishments obtained through the completion of the task. The conclusion can also feature followup information or further readings and websites student can check to learn more about the subject.

2.2 WebQuests in the Context of ELT Most WebQuests we found as examples were in the context of English Language Arts (in fact, the first author learned about WebQuests through his experiences as a doctoral student in the U.S.). The examples in the field of ELT are still scarce. The few ideas we found included a Power Point presentation from a South American instructor [25] and some adaptations of an idea from the Netherlands called LanguageQuests [26], [27] (TalenQuests in Dutch [28]). Our review of WebQuests oriented towards ELLs found that most of them were grammar-oriented, promoted lower-order thinking, and had a very unappealing layout and text organization. However, reviewing samples of LanguageQuests became a more daunting task. Our searches (first in 2011 and more recently while writing this paper) of up-to-date information and samples of LanguageQuests showed several sites already out of service and some which have not been updated since 2007. We will return to our review of these sites when we describe the implementation process. In another analysis of WebQuests, Sox and Rubinstein-Ávila [22] explored how the existing WebQuests created in English Language Arts courses tackled language support for ELLs. Their findings indicated that the majority of these WebQuests provided very little support for ELLs. The language in the texts was ambiguous and difficult to understand for ELLs unless they had major support. They also questioned the lack of scaffolding for ELLs, which was mostly notable in the lack of additional language resources. In the Colombian context, which is our main concern, we have not found any documented attempts (in major, indexed journals in the fields of education and ELT) to incorporate WebQuests in ELT classrooms in the existing literature. To the best of our knowledge (and all authors are still inquiring on this matter), our ongoing research, which includes this paper and a presentation we conducted last year [29], may very well constitute the first systematic attempt to frame the use of WebQuests in preservice English education in our country.

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THE CONTEXT OF PRESERVICE ENGLISH EDUCATION AT UPBMEDELLIN

Inspired by recent changes in policy and its own, ongoing development process of formative concepts and practices, the Faculty of Education at UPB-Medellín, has set in place an integrated, flexible, and contextualized curriculum. Two main pillars support this curricular transformation process. First, the principle of inclusion, through which prospective teachers immerse themselves in the different levels and cycles of education. The second principle, formation, intentional in nature, introduces students to ideas about learnability and teachability of the main subject areas of this program (Spanish and English). These principles facilitate how both students and instructors in the program transform themselves according to their needs, contexts, strengths, and weaknesses. This individual transformation is a necessary step to transform our society to redirect the new cadres of educators. These principles have triggered a series of goals for the Faculty, at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including: The recognition of the teachability of the Spanish and English languages; the critical analysis of social and educational conditions; the development of competences; evaluation, assessment, and testing in curricular constructions; and the development of autonomy and creative, just to name a few. These goals, in turn, set a series of characteristics, which include: a research foundation based on setting problematic situations in context; a flexible curriculum from integrated and transformative approaches; strong institutional criteria for research and practice; appropriation of ICTs [30] for knowledge mediation and interaction; reading and writing; and the subject areas, Spanish and English. These features are articulated through a series of formative

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cycles that allow teachers and students to generate questions, strategies, and research proposals that may emerge in today’s society.

3.1 The Faculty’s Pedagogical Model Three conceptual bases are the foundational structure of the pedagogical model at the Faculty of Education. First, the program proposes a transformative approach, which ensures that the program is not built around one single theory. Instead, this notion helps build the program around the reconceptualization and recontextualization of concepts and practices. These two ideas open a space for instructors and students to think about their own proposals and engage in a transformational process of education. Second, the program provides an integrated pedagogical model, which opens a space for reflection about where the subjects stand today and where they should go. This becomes a first step towards a true integration of these subjects in relation to others [31] and the recognition of the contextual conditions related to the different concepts and practices surrounding critical thinking and teacher formation [32] . Finally, the program has created an integrated curriculum, which takes into account the macro, meso, and micro levels of the educational system. This curriculum is sequential in nature, as follows: From the five educational nuclei (Teachability of Sciences, Knowledge, and Disciplines; Subject Educability; Curricular Constructions; Cultural and Educational Tendencies; and Historical and Epistemological Pedagogy) stem a series of curricular components. Each of these components is divided in modules served by a number of professors in the program. Ultimately, the modules, components, and nuclei all respond to connections to research, integrated encounters, and educational and pedagogical practices

3.2

Our Specific Component: Communicative Competence III

Communicative Competence III is a component ascribed to the “Teachability of Sciences, Knowledge, and Disciplines” nucleus. This component intends to improve both students’ learning strategies and their overall autonomy. It promotes the use of the linguistic, pragmatic, and socio-linguistic competences [10] as a step towards discriminating the emic and etic aspects of learning. In this process, students develop their competences and capabilities [33] in order to comprehend, recognize, and suggest new ways of learning and teaching in various contexts and environments [34]. Structurally, this component features two modules. The first one facilitates the construction and potentiation, through collaborative and participative work, of concepts and academic competences needed to develop a WebQuest project. The second module improves students’ communicative competences for designing, developing and presenting their projects. We will discuss what we did in each of the components in terms of WebQuest implementation in the sections that follow.

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THE IMPLEMENTATION OF WEBQUESTS IN OUR COMPONENT

We will now describe the process in which the five of us engaged in our component to design the WebQuests. We will first explain the rationale for the instructors to choose WebQuests. Then, as mentioned earlier, we will describe the work in each of the modules that comprised Communicative Competence III.

4.1

Why WebQuests?

The first two authors (Raúl and Juan Diego) were assigned as instructors for Communicative Competence III in the first semester of 2011. Both authors share similar views of education and the goals for language instruction. They both believe that technology can help improve the quality of teacher preparation and they have both done work (individually and as research partners) in the field of technological mediation. In their first meetings to plan the component, they discussed the possible alternatives for capstone projects. Raúl shared his experiences with WebQuests with preservice teachers during his time as a doctoral student. Juan Diego agreed that this idea had plenty of potential and could be a good fit in the ongoing curricular transformation process at the Faculty of Education. From a teacher education standpoint, WebQuests respond to a different view of the English methods component, specifically within the teachability nucleus. This new idea (shared by their other colleagues at the Faculty) posits that students are learning not just the language, but ideas about the language and about teaching. In this context, learning to critically find information is a crucial skill that prospective teachers need to develop to guide their students. As Halat [35] cautioned, “We must also remember that although the web has a lot of valuable information, it also has useless [and sometimes

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harmful] information” (p. 108). The use of WebQuests has also allowed us to engage in discussions with our students and other teacher educators about what it means to be an English teacher in this new century. We believe that the new educational needs of this century are inviting teachers to rethink their craft, moving from being information suppliers to becoming “facilitator[s] of the students’ learning” [36]. Finally, WebQuests provided us with an entry point to discuss research in our classes. We argue that the focus on inquiry that Dodge [14] and others have described in their work on WebQuests also provides a framework that one could equate with elements of developing a research project. For instance, the websites would represent data sources, while the process would resemble the data analysis procedures. The presentation of one’s research findings would find its equivalent in the creation of the actual task, whereas the conclusion could be analogous to the discussion of future lines of research. Therefore, WebQuests became a very useful tool to break down elements of research and become our students acquainted with these elements before they enroll in the research methods components in our program.

4.2

Conceptualizing the WebQuests 2

In the first module, where Juan Diego was the instructor , students discussed and read about the main 3 conceptual underpinnings that we are proposing to complement the idea of WebQuests . The readings and discussions we carried out in class intended to propose a strong conceptual framework that situated WebQuests within three ideas: First, we linked the socialization and learning processes stemming from WebQuests from a socio-cultural perspective, specifically relying on Vygotsky’s idea of the Zone of Proximal Development [8]. We also linked the language work tied to the WebQuests to the different ideas about competences. In this case, we analyzed with a critical lens the definitions and categories for competences found in the Common European Framework [10]. We also discussed the idea of communicative tasks [11] as a precursor to the kind of activities students would include in their WebQuest. The bookend of this conceptual work was drafting a document where they would outline a question they were interested in pursuing through their WebQuests. The draft also featured an explanation of the competences they were interested in integrating in their WebQuests.their work designing the WebQuests in the second module.

4.3

Drafting the WebQuests

Once the students had finished the conceptual discussions in the first module, they started the more practical work with the WebQuests with Raúl in the second module. At the beginning of this module, Raúl and the students carefully discussed the draft each student wrote with Juan Diego in the first module. Each student had a chance to explain his/her ideas, while Raúl wrote notes on the whiteboard. In these notes, all students and the instructor had to start linking the ideas from the draft to the sections of the WebQuest. From each discussion, students had some suggestions to start designing their WebQuests. These discussions enabled the students to learn that through the different topics, tasks, activities, and resources of the WebQuests, their students would be reinforcing the competences in which they were interested. The end of this first part of the second module featured an extended discussion of what WebQuests are about and a summary definition constructed between the students and Raúl. It is important to point out that we have graphic data from all the analyses of the drafts and an audio recording of Raúl’s explication of WebQuests. We intend to revisit these data for our further work on WebQuests.

5

DESIGNING THE WEBQUESTS

After the review of the activities, each student went on to design his/her own WebQuest. Concurrent with the design work, they also had to revisit the draft they wrote for the first module and include ideas regarding the creation process and the things they learned out of this experience. The next section will

2

It is important to point out that, while Juan Diego and Raúl are in charge of separate modules within the component, they actually co-teach several sessions in both modules. We have found that this approach provides a more articulated discourse so that the modules do not seem disjointed. 3

Our reviews of the literature to this point do not show any work that links these ideas to the practical work of creating WebQuests. This, for us, becomes one of the strongest points and major contributions of this entire proposal.

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summarize Laura’s, Liliana’s, and Raúl’s stories, combining summary statements with actual quotes 4 from the students’ original drafts .

5.1

Laura Mildrey’s WebQuest

Laura’s WebQuest [37] intended to address the question, “How can English teachers reinforce the Lexical Competence with English students?” Laura found this question and the idea of lexical competence interesting because, “it is significant that English teachers offer a wide range of possibilities in order to reinforce the lexical competence in their students.” Once Laura had defined her competence and refined her question, she started working on her WebQuest. The following vignette explains what Laura did to build her WebQuest: First, I did the task, the production of their own "Knowing a person and his/her culture" television show, which would vividly illustrate the life of the person and his/her culture. Then, [I created the] process, which consisted in [creating] the order for the development of the task; it contains short and concrete assignments. After that, I wrote the introduction and started looking for the resources about each city. This part took a lot of time because in this work it is very important to have good resources. Finally, I ended this work by doing the evaluation. [For this WebQuest,] students will be evaluated in four special categories: process, presentation, creativity, and summary. [The evaluation] will use a rubric with different rates: outstanding, good, acceptable, unacceptable. Laura was very interested in having students learn about other places, not necessarily with a focus on whether things were better elsewhere (a view that we critiqued in some of the WebQuests we reviewed). Laura’s WebQuest actually aimed at starting a process of genuine cultural awareness that would in turn allow students to develop a more sophisticated lexical competence.

5.2

Liliana’s WebQuest

Liliana [38] chose to address the question, “How can affective strategies facilitate meaningful learning in English students”. Her rationale for this question was that, “Emotions and attitudes can facilitate or make difficult the assimilation of new knowledge.” Regarding the process itself, Liliana explained, The process for making the Web Quest was not easy, because it was important to create a tool that was not only useful, but at the same time was interesting and coincides with the objective of our research question. This was something that tested my creativity because think about a way to make those students were interested in culture and could learn from it, was not so simple. Therefore, with the help of my teacher decided to create a Web Quest that would enhance socio-affective competence, so I created a series of activities that allow students to know their own culture, in this case the “paisa” culture. In Liliana’s case, the discussion we had brought up an interesting development: A reflection on what the idea of “language immersion” is all about. In our class, we first reflected on how the traditional view of immersion was about going abroad, to a country where they would speak the target language, and learn about their culture. What we proposed in this WebQuest in particular was rather different. It was a look about immersion from within: Immersion, in our view, can also be about using the target language to discover features about our own culture and communities. This would be, then, the first step before sharing our findings about ourselves with others around the world.

5.3

Raúl’s Story

Raúl [39] became interested in the discursive competence. His question, “How can the discursive competence be used to help English students to become fluent writers” was the result of his concern about “important elements like cohesion, coherence and organization very useful to write, which, in my case, have been difficult to apply when I’m writing.” The vignette below will explain what Raúl dld to crystallize this idea within a WebQuest, I started to think how fairy tales we all know could work as elements that children might use as a base to create their own parallel stories… Whatever I was going to create, I should take in to account children´s ages, background knowledge, and school levels. I chose Hansel and Gretel 4

Some of the quotes may have been edited for grammar and spelling. Additional words that were necessary are in brackets. However, the spirit of each student’s words remains intact and unfiltered.

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as the tale that children who were going work on my WebQuest had to follow like a reference to write a parallel story about one character (on this case the witch), having in to account that depending on the English level of the learner the product (the parallel story) would be different; so before they started the process they had to choose which level they would be able to work in. Raúl’s WebQuest drew inspiration from Jenkins’ [40] ideas on how to rewrite a television show and the ten strategies he proposed in his book. Raúl was interested in opening spaces for students to rewrite traditional stories in their own terms as a first step to engage them in more creative forms of writing later on.

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DISCUSSION

The process of creating the component and integrating the idea of WebQuests to the institutional expectations has been a very exciting and challenging task. It made students and instructors alike move out of our comfort zones and explore other learning options. In this section we will discuss two main issues: (a) some questions that we and others have posed about our work and (b) the lessons our students learned.

6.1

Some Questions about Implementation

As we continued our research on WebQuests, while Raúl and Juan Diego were simultaneously rethinking the component for the new students, we started wondering some possible questions about our work. One question was why we actually chose WebQuests, as opposed to wikis or blogs. We realized that WebQuests were the option that gave us the biggest degree of creative freedom. It opened a space to learn more deeply about website design, for instance, and to learn more deeply about what it means to select quality resources. Although one can attain that goal through a wiki, we still believe that the creative approach of the tasks makes the notion of critical selection of resources more accessible when working with children or teens. We also wondered what kind of tasks would qualify for a WebQuest. Although March [41] had already pointed out some of the pitfalls teachers should bear in mind when creating WebQuests, our belief is that any topic in the curriculum can lend itself to a WebQuest. Our only word of caution would be never to make a WebQuest around a grammar topic, but to embed the grammar within a more engaging theme or scenario. Our next question was what kind of resources and knowledge one needs in order to create a WebQuest. We discovered that extensive knowledge of web design is not a requirement, considering how many free hosting sites are available and how intuitive they actually are. The knowledge that really matters, we would argue, is what teachers are already bringing to the table. Their knowledge about their subjects and how one finds information is the key to be a successful facilitator

6.2

What the Students Learned

Each student had the chance to reflect on the little and larger lessons they learned after completing their WebQuests and they also wrote about them in their drafts. Laura, for instance, explained that “This activity promotes individual and cooperative work, so it is vital that all of the group members know their abilities and flaws in order to accomplish an excellent job.” Liliana invited all teachers to “make use of tools like these because the technology, in this case the Internet, becomes a powerful instrument to encourage new and better learning processes in students.” Finally, Raúl argued that “learning how to use and design WebQuests provides our English components with new ways to make students think and be more creative.”

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CODA: CURRENT CHALLENGES AND FUTURE DESTINATIONS

At the time of writing this paper, the first two authors are still in the process of refining the proposal. For our second cohort, the students in that component engaged in a collaborative project with preservice English teachers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From this project, we learned what it takes for our students to overcome the fears associated with learning a second language and use it for creative educational purposes. All five authors are still engaged with the WebQuest initiative through our writing and our conversations. We are hopeful that our ongoing reflexivity around WebQuest will become a catalyst to initiate more student-instructor collaborations in other components within and beyond the teachability nucleus.

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This year, while working with the third cohort, Raúl and Juan Diego have made new improvements to the component. They are also thinking of how to involve these other two cohorts in research and publication efforts. The goal is that these other students may also benefit from the chances to write and present that the first cohort has thus far enjoyed. There is also the challenge of how all five authors can get more instructors and students in our local, regional, and national contexts involved in our initiative. There is also the larger question of how to take our classroom reflections and turning them into research projects. In this regard, we believe that this paper is a good start for us. We feel we are on solid ground and we are all looking forward to all that we can do in terms of engaging our students through technology and critical thinking. The WebQuests themselves are just the beginning of a journey. This is a journey that for Raúl, Juan Diego, Laura Mildrey, Liliana, and Raúl will definitely continue long after we type the final period in this paper.

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