Scaffolding through WebQuest

To develop students’ writing performance 
  introduction
  • —teachers found that students make less progress in the writing instruction than other skills.
  • —internet provides many benefits such as providing intrinsic motivation to students, giving authentic material resources, and improving reading and writing skills (Singhal, 1997)
  • —WebQuest with focus on writing activities provides authentic resources for reading (as the input), elicits interaction in completing collaborative task, and encourages output to produce final task (Hamel, 2005; Perez-Torres, 2005).
  • —WebQuest fosters learner-centered learning, scaffolding, social-interaction, and authentic context (Simina & Hammel, 2005), and collaborative learning (Meskill, 2003)
  • —The scaffolding is to facilitate secondary L2 students in writing activities in form of resources links and student collaboration 

 Internet in Writing Activities
  • —Internet-based inquiry activity brings the students into authentic resources for L2 exposure
  • —Connecting the learners to internet is an approach to writing. The learners can participate in online writing workshop and interact utilizing online information resources for writing materials (Hyland 2002).
  • —It gives the students exposure to authentic English resources to find information as the input.
  •  —The information collected will be transformed to be new knowledge for resources to the writing. The transformation occurs as the result of thinking process during the reading such as skimming, scanning, evaluating, and synthesizing (McPherson & Murray, 2004).
  • engaging learners in a project for language acquisition provides a context where learners interaction as the scaffolding for themselves (Jeon-Ellis et.al, 2005).
  • —The collaboration in order to negotiate meaning includes comprehending reading materials and constructing composition
 WebQuest
 
—“an inquiry oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet” (Dodge, 1997).
—“a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students' investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding.” (March, 2005).
 Components of WebQuest
 
—Introduction
—Introduction
  To give background information on the topic and reasons to investigate
—Task
  To set the context through the steps required to complete task
—Process
  To outline necessary steps to assist learners in accomplishing the task.  A set of activities and resources links
—Evaluation
  To establish the criteria to evaluate the final task, in the form performance and language levels, where students can do self-assessment
—Conclusion
  To summarize what students have learned from the Webquests and encourages students to apply what they have learned in their local context
  To give background information on the topic and reasons to investigate
—Task
  To set the context through the steps required to complete task
—Process
  To outline necessary steps to assist learners in accomplishing the task.  A set of activities and resources links
—Evaluation
  To establish the criteria to evaluate the final task, in the form performance and language levels, where students can do self-assessment
—Conclusion
  To summarize what students have learned from the Webquests and encourages students to apply what they have learned in their local context
 Scaffolding  (writing)
 
—temporary assistance by which teacher helps a learner know how to do something, later in order for them to be able to complete a similar task alone (Gibbon, 2002).
—The scaffolding can be provided by the WebQuest particularly in the ’Process’ stage which has some steps for brainstorming the topic, and provides tutorial page where the learners can learn all about the text type and practice the writing online. Moreover, in the stage ‘Task’ the WebQuest encourages the students to work collaboratively producing a report text.
 Scaffolding  (web-integrated learning)
 
—provides clear directions
—clarifies purpose
—keeps students on task
—offers assessment to clarify expectations
—points students to worthy sources.
—reduces uncertainty, surprise and disappointment.
—delivers efficiency
—creates momentum
(McKenzie 2007)

 Research Methods
 
—qualitative research design in the form of case study
—Observation,  Interviews,  Document text analysis
—Observation of students activities: browsing and surfing the web, managing resources, identifying and using proper information, collecting data, and their collaborative interaction during completing the task