What is the value of webquests in education?

Webquests are a great resource for involving students in higher-order thinking. Imagine a school, where you go in every day, and answer questions from a textbook or workbook. Now imagine a school where students go on the computer and are researching a topic, analyzing the information found, making comparisons, and drawing conclusions based on these activities. The latter are the types of work that make students think, that go beyond giving definitions, or answering short questions, but move into the higher-order thinking processes of analysis and creation. Webquests allow students to work at their own pace, and are of great value to education due to the critical thinking and analysis aspects contained within.

These webquests can take place over a short period of time (one to three class periods or a weekend homework assignment), or take place over a couple of weeks. Longer webquests however are more difficult to implement in the classroom, because it is difficult to provide all of the information and tasks needed for a longer webquest on one website that is manageable for the students. By merely bringing in the use of a computer with my smartboard, I have found in my own classroom that math suddenly becomes much more engaging for students. Now give them the opportunity to explore websites on their own, and you will be pleasantly surprised at the new found excellent work ethics in students. Just make sure that their searches are geared towards obtaining the learning objectives at hand and not spent on finding out the scores from the games on tv last night!