Why

**Why ** do WebQuests work?

From Wiggins and McTighe's (2005) work in //Understanding by Design// (also known as "backward design"), we know "authentic performance tasks are distinguished from other types of assessments by their particular features. Performance tasks typically present students with a problem: a real-world goal, set within a realistic context of challenges and possibilities. Students develop a tangible product or performance for an identified audience (sometimes real, sometimes simulated). And the evaluative criteria and performance standards are appropriate to the task--and known by the student in advance." A good WebQuest does all that and more.

"The instructional goal of a longer term WebQuest is what Marzano (1992) calls Dimension 3: extending and refining knowledge. After completing a longer term WebQuest, a learner would have analyzed a body of knowledge deeply, transformed it in some way, and demonstrated an understanding of the material by creating something that others can respond to, on-line or off-." ([|from WebQuest.org])

"Learning from one's experience and through one's questions is based on a philosophy called "constructivism," put forth by Piaget and others. According to constructivism, we don't just //absorb// understanding, instead we //build it//. Learners need opportunities to figure out for themselves how new learning fits with old so that they can attach it to what they already know, making it part of their existing knowledge structures or "assimilating it." When they figure out that new learning doesn't with old learning, they need to restructure their current understandings to fit with the new knowledge or to "accommodate it." These processes, assimilating and accommodating, are part of learners' theory building as they make sense of the world." ([|from Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education])

__References__ Wiggins, G. & McTighe J. (2005). //Understanding by design.// Alexandria VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Marzano, R. J. (1992). //A different kind of classroom: Teaching with dimensions of learning//. Alexandria VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.