Introduction

This document should be written with the student as the intended audience. Write a short paragraph here to introduce the activity or lesson to the students. If there is a role or scenario involved (e.g., "You are a detective trying to identify the mysterious poet.") then here is where you'll set the stage. If there's no motivational intro like that, use this section to provide a short advance organizer or overview. Remember that the purpose of this section is to both prepare and hook the reader.

It is also in this section that you'll communicate the Big Question (Essential Question, Guiding Question) that the whole WebQuest is centered around.

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Task

Describe crisply and clearly what the end result of the learners' activities will be. The task could be a:

• problem or mystery to be solved;
• position to be formulated and defended;
• product to be designed;
• complexity to be analyzed;
• personal insight to be articulated;
• summary to be created;
• persuasive message or journalistic account to be crafted;
• a creative work, or
• anything that requires the learners to process and transform the information they've gathered.

If the final product involves using some tool (e.g., HyperStudio, the Web, video), mention it here.

Don't list the steps that students will go through to get to the end point. That belongs in the Process section.

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Process

To accomplish the task, what steps should the learners go through? Use the numbered list format in your web editor to automatically number the steps in the procedure. Describing this section well will help other teachers to see how your lesson flows and how they might adapt it for their own use, so the more detail and care you put into this, the better. Remember that this whole document is addressed to the student, however, so describe the steps using the second person.

Learners will access the on-line resources that you've identifed as they go through the Process. You may have a set of links that everyone looks at as a way of developing background information, or not. If you break learners into groups, embed the links that each group will look at within the description of that stage of the process. (Note, this is a change from the older WebQuest templates which included a separate Resources section. It's now clear that the resources belong in the Process section rather than alone.)

In the Process block, you might also provide some guidance on how to organize the information gathered. This advice could suggestions to use flowcharts, summary tables, concept maps, or other organizing structures. The advice could also take the form of a checklist of questions to analyze the information with, or things to notice or think about. If you have identified or prepared guide documents on the Web that cover specific skills needed for this lesson (e.g. how to brainstorm, how to prepare to interview an expert), link them to this section.

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Conclusion

Put a couple of sentences here that summarize what they will have accomplished or learned by completing this activity or lesson. You might also include some rhetorical questions or additional links to encourage them to extend their thinking into other content beyond this lesson.

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These pages were developed through TeacherTECH, the teacher professional development component of GirlTECH, which is sponsored by the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education (CEEE) and made possible by support from the National Science Foundation and Rice University.

Copyright © 1995 -2006 by TeacherTECH
Updated: Thursday, June 8, 2006 8:06 PM
URL = http://teachertech.rice.edu/Materials/TeacherTECH/