Background information

Einstein College is a college with 550 students and 45 teachers plus staff. They are located in a rural area and they have a mixed population and most of the parents are involved. They don't use a lot of information technology in the lessons. Only a few teachers are using computers in their classrooms.

Question/challenge
Einstein College had a problem with the motivation of some students. They complained that the education was too much theory orientated and boring. There were too many students dropping out. The teachers wanted to explore some more learner centred ways of learning where the context was authentic.

Solution
They decided to start with a didactical tool/methodology called WebQuests. Bernie Dodge is the creator of the concept of a WebQuest, an information technology education tool, and QuestGarden, an online authoring tool and community of practice for WebQuest development. He is a Professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State University.

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

A WebQuest has 6 components (University of Houston):

A group of teachers started with WebQuest (different subjects), they used different kind of WebQuests. Most of them were focused on the town where the kids were living. One example: a WebQuest about history. Kids had to group up with 4 students and they were a team of journalist. The challenge was to create a book for new people who moved into town. Within the book there was some history about the town and actual and practical information. The group was divided into different roles. One student was the photographer, an other one the writer etc. On the computer the red the WebQuest and they had to go through websites and online archives. The kids also had to interview old and young people and take picture of the surrounding of the school. Than they started to assemble the information into a book. The book was even published and distributed along other students and parents.

Remarks
This project was a success. The format of the WebQuest structured the activities. Students were very motivated. The only negative aspect was the needed time investment from the developers. Although it was technically easy to create the WebQuests, it was harder to define interesting challenges and to write clear assignments. Als the evaluation model was not easy to establish. But they decided to expand the WebQuest activities and now 2/3 of all the teachers are using it in their classrooms. The learnt the concept of WebQuests during a 1-day workshop.