Increasing Student Engagement and Retention UsingOnline Learning ActivitiesRethinking WebQuests in Second Language Teacher Education: The Case of OneColombian UniversityRaúl Alberto Mora, Juan Diego Martínez, Liliana Alzate-Pérez, Raúl Gómez-Yepes,Laura Mildrey Zapata-Monsalve

Article information:To cite this document: Raúl Alberto Mora, Juan Diego Martínez, Liliana Alzate-Pérez, Raúl Gómez-Yepes, Laura Mildrey Zapata-Monsalve. "Rethinking WebQuestsin Second Language Teacher Education: The Case of One Colombian University"In Increasing Student Engagement and Retention Using Online Learning Activities.Published online: 08 Mar 2015; 291-319.Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/S2044-9968(2012)000006A013

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RETHINKING WEBQUESTS IN

SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHER

EDUCATION: THE CASE OF ONE

COLOMBIAN UNIVERSITY

Raul Alberto Mora, Juan Diego Martınez,

Liliana Alzate-Perez, Raul Gomez-Yepes and

Laura Mildrey Zapata-Monsalve

ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the results of the collective experience of two pro-fessors and three students in implementing WebQuests in a preserviceEnglish education component. The first part of the chapter provided adefinition of WebQuests, situating this particular proposal within the lit-erature on second language education and the Colombian and LatinAmerican contexts. The authors found that the paucity of studies ondesigning WebQuests, specifically in Latin America, became one of thestrengths of their work. The next section situated how implementingWebQuests in this preservice program enabled an expansion of theactual conceptual framework that is currently in place for WebQuests

Increasing Student Engagement and Retention using Online Learning Activities:

Wikis, Blogs and Webquests

Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, Volume 6A, 291�319

Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 2044-9968/doi:10.1108/S2044-9968(2012)000006A013

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by adding ideas about competences and socio-cultural and critical think-ing theories. However, there is an explanation about how WebQuestsbecame a very feasible alternative to respond to the curricular demandsof their institution. Next, the authors shared a multi-vocal account, fromevery author’s vantage point, of how they carried out their work withWebQuests. This implementation process generated a series of changesin the way students saw themselves as learners and future teachers, gain-ing more ownership of the idea of WebQuests beyond a semester assign-ment. The instructors, as the result of their work, are now thinking ofbetter ways to redefine how they use WebQuests and how they will gettheir other cohorts involved in collaborative academic efforts. This chap-ter is, then, not only an account of an experience, but an invitation tothink about how to expand the boundaries of preservice teacher educa-tion through technological mediation.

Keywords: WebQuests; English education; ELT; preservice teachers;Colombia; curricular transformation

The current landscape of English teacher education has brought a push inprofessional development (Koc & Bakir, 2010) and curricular efforts toincorporate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in physi-cal classrooms (i.e., blended learning environments). However, some of thesetechnology initiatives lack a strong conceptual rationale (Cope & Kalantzis,2007; Mora, 2011a). Without clear and engaging tasks, most Internet-basedactivities just combine GoogleTM, WikipediaTM, or YouTubeTM with gram-mar or pronunciation websites. The usual outcomes of these activities seldomfoster critical thinking skills, strong criteria to select content online (Segers &Verhoeven, 2009), or the necessary communicative competencies in a secondlanguage. In addition, in the case of copy-and-paste written reports, there isthe constant risk of plagiarism (Badke, 2010; Callison, 2005; Dames, 2007).

In the search for more engaging ways to use technology for more mean-ingful learning in teacher education, more alternatives have begun to sur-face. Besides wikis and blogs, WebQuests (Dodge, 1997; March, 2007) havebecome a viable option to increase the quality of technology mediation inour classrooms. Although there are documented efforts to implementWebQuests in classrooms (Chatel & Nodell, 2002; Halat, 2008; Kelly, 2000;LoParrino, 2005; Segers & Verhoeven, 2009; Summerville, 2000; Vidoni &Maddux, 2002), and preservice teacher education (Manning & Carpenter,2008; Wang & Hannafin, 2008), their use is still emerging in English

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education (Barahona, n.d.; Sen & Neufeld, 2006; Sox & Rubinstein-Avila,2009), specifically in the Colombian and Latin American contexts.

This is the overall context that frames our chapter, in which we will shareour experiences implementing WebQuests as the capstone project for theCommunicative Competence III component (the curricular structure of ourpreservice English-Spanish education program has moved from the idea of“courses” to that of “components”) at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana,in Medellın (UPB-Medellın). Inspired by Kumaravadivelu’s ideal of the“transformative intellectual” (2003, p. 13), this chapter proposes a revam-ped framework that combines WebQuests with concepts such as compe-tences, critical thinking, communicative tasks, and socio-cultural theories.

Besides the revised framework, this chapter will present, through thefirst-person accounts from Raul A. and Juan Diego (the instructors) andLiliana, Raul, and Laura Mildrey (the students), some of the conceptualshifts that took place. Our experience in this chapter will show how wemoved from an instructor�student relationship to becoming co-researchers(Clift, Brady, Mora, Stegemoller, & Choi, 2006), while enabling students tobecome more involved in their own learning process beyond just fulfillinga specific task in the curriculum.

To guide our discussion, we propose the following questions:

� What makes WebQuests a viable alternative in second language teachereducation?

� What does the implementation process look like from the vantage pointsof the faculty and the preservice teachers?

� What can the field of second language teacher education learn from ourwork to replicate successful experiences with WebQuests and technologyin preservice methods courses?

DEFINING WEBQUESTS

It is well documented (Chatel & Nodell, 2002; Halat, 2008; Schweizer &Kossow, 2007; Summerville, 2000; Sen & Neufeld, 2006; Vidoni & Mad-dux, 2002) that Bernie Dodge, a Professor at San Diego State University,first created WebQuests as “inquiry-oriented” (Dodge, 1997) activities.WebQuests, as Halat (2008) explained, are “a computer-based teaching andlearning model in which learners are actively involved in an activity orsituation and use the Internet as a resource” (p. 109). When designing

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WebQuests, teachers should link them to specific themes and topicswithin the regular curriculum (Schweizer & Kossow, 2007), encouraginginterdisciplinary work whenever possible (Sox & Rubinstein-Avila, 2009).In the completion of the tasks in a WebQuest, “students are not expectedto receive information passively but rather to use it actively to achieve acertain purpose” (Sen and Neufeld, 2006, WebQuests, para. 2).

Benefits

WebQuests give students a chance to use their time more efficiently, focus onusing rather than merely searching for information, and engage in more high-er-order thinking (Chatel & Nodell, 2002; Mulligan, Strong, Crabbe, &Steen, 2006; Polly & Ausband, 2009; Vidoni & Maddux, 2002). Halat (2008)argued that WebQuests may lead to increased student motivation, help tea-chers become more creative in their selection of activities, and give a differentlight to the use of the Internet in the classroom (p. 110). Sox and Rubinstein-Avila (2009) mentioned the “potential for accommodating diverse learners �especially ELLs” (p. 39) as an added benefit of incorporating WebQuests inthe curriculum. Finally, Garcıa Laborda (2010) expressed that WebQuests“represent a motivating and optimal way of learning a language, and simul-taneously, develop cooperative and problem solving skills” (p. 256).

Structure

A quality WebQuest contains six basic elements (Dodge, 1997), each ofwhich we will explain below.

IntroductionThe introduction features an engaging presentation of the background, sce-narios, and other relevant information that leads students into the workthat they will do later. Ideas for the introduction may include historicaldata, facts, and other contextual information. One needs to remember,however, that the goal of the introduction is to capture students’ attentionand interest. Therefore, the language one uses is just as important as theinformation one presents.

TaskOnce students are more aware of the general topics and themes of theWebQuest, they will find out what they are supposed to do to complete it.

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The proposed task should be “authentic, interesting, and doable”(Manning & Carpenter, 2008, p. 49). One very common way to present thetask is to give students a specific role (LoParrino, 2005), since WebQuestsare conceived as team activities where each individual will contribute to thesuccessful completion of the task. When creating the task, we suggestfollowing these questions, “Could the answer be copied and pasted?” and“Does the task require students to make something new out of what theyhave learned?” (March, 2007, p. 15)

ProcessOnce the task is set, students will have to complete smaller activitiesor assignments along the way. When designing the process, keep in mindthat every step of the process must help complete the task and the acti-vities should combine individual work with small-group or whole-groupspaces. However, the activities should never let students divide the assign-ments at the beginning, meet at the end, and never have to work together(March, 2006).

ResourcesA well-crafted WebQuest might fail if one chooses subpar resourcesfrom the Internet. Teachers should rely on their expertise and alreadydeveloped critical thinking skills to provide good examples of what the bestwebsites look like. Although this could be time-consuming, we mustremember that “finding apt links on the Web can excite students to furtherstudy, support individual interest, reveal concerned online communities,and connect students to real-world topics” (March, 2000, The TeachableMoment, para. 1). Resources should provide enough information to com-plete the task. In the context of second language learners, this information,which one would consider a source of scaffolding (Wang & Hannafin,2008), may include online dictionaries and thesauri, grammar sites, infor-mation about writing, and any other learning tool that may help studentswith their tasks.

Some authors differ whether to show the resources embedded in theprocess (Schweizer & Kossow, 2007; Vidoni & Maddux, 2002) or isolated(Chatel & Nodell, 2002; Halat, 2008; Polly & Ausband, 2009). While wesuggest embedding the resources within the process page of the WebQuest,the teacher should make the final choice. In some cases, it might be moreuseful to include the primary resources (i.e., information to complete thetasks) in the Process section and place the language support resources on aseparate page (Sox & Rubinstein-Avila, 2009).

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EvaluationStudents need to know what teachers expect of them as they work on theirWebQuests (Mulligan et al., 2006). Here is where the evaluation pagebecomes handy. In this page, teachers will include a clear rubric (Andrade,1997, 2000; Whittaker, Salend, & Duhaney, 2001) that features what crite-ria (most specifically, formative criteria) teachers will use to assess the pro-ducts of the students’ tasks.

ConclusionThis section may include some words of encouragement for completing thetask, follow-up information to expand on the different themes from theWebQuest, or any other relevant information that the teacher wishes toshare with his/her students.

WEBQUESTS IN EDUCATION AND SECOND

LANGUAGE: A REVIEW

To learn about the implementation of WebQuests in educational con-texts, we looked for scholarly reports from peer-reviewed journals andconference proceedings. We focused on accounts of countries whereEnglish is a second language (Skutnabb-Kangas & McCarty, 2008), avoid-ing the traditional distinction between second and foreign language(Mora, 2011b).

One group of articles (Garcıa Guillen, n.d.; Halat, 2008; Hromnıkova,2008; Lopez Morales, n.d.; Sviridon, 2008) mostly discussed the objectives,structure, and potential benefits of WebQuests. They situated WebQuestswithin a constructivist framework, with some references to scaffolding(Hromnıkova, 2008; Sviridon, 2008). The articles mentioned that promo-tion of autonomy (Lopez Morales, n.d.; Sviridon, 2008) and the effectiveuse of time (Garcıa Guillen, n.d.) were beneficial aspects of incorporatingWebQuests in the L2 classroom.

Two articles (Agolli, 2011; Garcıa Laborda, 2010) showed how stu-dents in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses used WebQuests forproblem-solving. The authors found the emphasis on “real-life contexts”(Agolli, 2011, Conclusion, para. 1) as an advantage of WebQuests. Inanother study (Sen & Neufeld, 2006), the authors discussed the uses andbenefits of WebQuest implementation in the context of English languagecourses at a Turkish university. Their findings showed overall satisfactionabout using WebQuest within language instruction.

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Finally, two articles looked at WebQuests within preservice education,in mathematics (Halat & Peker, 2011) and physical education (Mohamed &Abd El Rheem, 2010). Both studies indicated that, compared to traditionalinstruction in methods courses, incorporating WebQuests would providebenefits to how prospective teachers learned and applied information abouttheir craft.

Relation to Our Work

The first issue we found in our review was the focus on implementing exist-ing WebQuests, rather than designing WebQuests. The other issue was thelack of studies from South America in the literature. The only evidence wefound from this region was a Power Point presentation (Barahona, n.d.).We believe this is a call for more research in the South American (and evenLatin American) ELT community.

In the case of our home country, Colombia, we did not find any articlesin peer-reviewed journals. Based on our inquiries, it seems that our work onWebQuest implementation (Mora et al., 2011; Mora, Martınez, Zapata-Monsalve, Alzate-Perez, & Gomez-Yepes, 2012; this chapter) might be oneof the most systematic efforts to implement WebQuests in preserviceEnglish Language Teaching education today.

THE CONTEXT OF PRESERVICE TEACHER

EDUCATION AT UPB-MEDELLIN

Raul A. and Juan Diego first chose to Implement WebQuests in Commu-nicative Competence III based on the appeal of the activity and its noveltyin Colombia. However, they also had to respond to the larger institutionaldemands of the Faculty of Education at UPB-Medellın. This section willhighlight the conditions of preservice teacher education at our home insti-tution, how the component responded to those conditions, and why Web-Quests was such a viable choice.

The Curricular Transformation at UPB-Medellın

In an effort to meet the demands of the Colombian and international edu-cational contexts, the Faculty of Education transformed the educational

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and curricular models of its undergraduate programs. Intent on poten-tiating students’ communicative competence and their pedagogical anddidactic proposals, manifested in methods and approaches to learn Spanishand English, the transformation relies on the concepts of learnability (Pin-ker, 1984, 1989) and teachability (Dornyei, 1995; Pienemann, 1984; Scar-damalia, Bereiter, & Steinbach, 1984) as conceptual underpinnings.Through these concepts, learners and instructors should find more effectiveways to face their needs, contexts, strengths, and weaknesses in the contextof learning and teaching English and Spanish.

Core Goals and ConceptsThe Faculty of Education, as part of the School of Education and Pedagogy,educates critical professionals with high intellectual, ethical, social, and inter-cultural values. Through the emphasis on research, technical, and humancompetencies and capabilities (Nussbaum, 1999), program graduates shouldbe able to address globalization’s ongoing requirements and help improve thecountry’s language teacher education and bilingualism policies.

To meet these expectations, the School’s Pedagogical Model (Universi-dad Pontificia Bolivariana, 2010) places the teacher in a significant role associety builder and knowledge mediator. His role is part of an academicand iterative exercise of pedagogical and didactic reflection through spe-cific knowledge, disciplines, and sciences, which relies on three main con-cepts. The first concept, transformative approach, explains how we arereconceptualizing and recontextualizing the various theoretical conceptsand teaching practices in the Language Teaching Program. In thisapproach, students and teachers reflect on learnable, teachable, and forma-tive situations while designing their own educational transformation.

The second concept, the integrated pedagogical model, proposes a newapproach toward intersubjectivity (i.e., what the subject is, would be, andwould like to be) to build knowledge by experimenting in relation to others(Dıaz Barriga Arceo & Hernandez Rojas, 1998). In this sense, the Peda-gogical Model features a system of concepts, theories, beliefs, and princi-ples that guide learning, teaching, and formative processes.

The final concept, the integrated curriculum, systematically organizesand integrates the required knowledge and practices to educate pre-serviceteachers through three structures:

� the macrostructure, anticipated by a formative intention that includesintegrated nuclei, components (actually a better fit for the conceptualflexibility we expect from our program), and formative cycles;

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� the mesostructure, which defines the competences to be developed inrelation to the formative nuclei; and

� the microstructure, related to the way modules are develop according tothe mesostructural components already mentioned.

As a result, the Faculty of Education has set some goals for its pro-posal, as follows:

� Acknowledgment of teachability and learnability of both Spanish andEnglish languages;

� Critical analysis of social and educational conditions;� Development of communicative and strategic competences;� Evaluation, assessment, and testing of learning practices;� Acknowledgment and comprehension of the epistemological condition

of pedagogy, autonomy, and creativity;� Research based on an relation set by problematic situations in context;� Knowledge mediation and interaction through ICTs; and

Program StructureFour stages structure our program, as presented in Table 1.

This educational model is a system of context-based concepts, theo-ries, beliefs, and principles. This system guides the learning and teachingprocesses and the construction of an academic community based on thecollective awareness of personal and educational conditions. Ultimately,the model proposes a critical view of people’s own practices in terms ofa suitable conceptual framework, the teaching tradition, and possiblegoals.

Table 1. Program Structure.

Stage Feature Description

Macrostructure Formative nuclei Teachability of sciences, knowledge and disciplines;

subject educability; curriculum design; cultural

and educational tendencies; and historical and

epistemological pedagogy.

Mesostructure Components Curricular elements of the program

Microstructure Modules Division within components; independent structure

but integrated in nature

Relation to

research

Work sessions Lectures, workshops based on educational topic,

performed by an academic or administrative

expert

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The Communicative Competence Cycle

Communicative Competence is a four-component cycle (I�IV) within theTeachability of Sciences nucleus. Every component promotes specificaspects of the process of learning to teach and the development of stu-dents’ own competences, while fostering the four conceptual axes of theprogram (Reading, Writing, ICTs, and Research).

To define competence, we draw from the Common European Frameworkof Reference for Languages � CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001a), whichconceives the language user as a social actor performing communicativetasks. Specifically, the communicative competence first takes into consider-ation the uses and intentions of language, relying upon the linguistic (lexi-cal, semantic, orthographic, morphologic, phonologic, etc.), sociolinguistic(language use in context) and pragmatic (macro-functions and micro-func-tions) aspects of the language. But, it also considers how subjects behaveand act according to their intent to communicate; that is, the general com-petences of a language use (knowledge, know-how, skills, existential com-petence, savoir-etre).

In short, the communicative competence shows how users, based onprevious knowledge, tasks, and practices, interact with each other indiverse contexts as they reach specific purposes. Language, then, becomesa vehicle to materialize thoughts in context, as opposed to the goal, whereindividuals consciously rely on their existing schemata to perform a com-municative task and facilitate language learning. Puren (1998) conceivedthis as a systemic process that allows learning through the interactionswith others and the integration of the cognitive, volitive, and emotionaldimensions in context.

Therefore, the curricular proposal at the School of Education under-stands communicative competence as the completion of a communicativetask (Nunan, 2004; Vallejo Gomez & Martınez Marın, 2011). Completingthis task integrates three elements: (a) comprehension, interaction, andproduction (Puren, 2004) in terms of linguistic, pragmatic, and sociolin-guistic competences, (b) the contextual, social, and cultural conditions, and(c) the user’s skills and abilities.

Communicative Competence III

Raul A. and Juan Diego set as a goal for this component to develop thecommunicative competence through the use of WebQuests. The activities

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and contents intend to improve students’ learning strategies and auton-omy through comprehension, self-regulation, and written and oral pro-duction tasks at an intermediate level of English (in their transition fromlevel A2 (Basic User, Waystage) to B1 (Independent User, Threshold)(Council of Europe, 2001a, p. 24). Students consciously apply the com-municative competence (Council of Europe, 2001a) to discriminate theemic (common use) from the etic (proper use) functions of language.This discrimination, derived from comprehension, production, and inter-action, improves the academic and learning procedures set in virtual andphysical environments.

Students develop communicative activities (language and specific knowl-edge input and output) and the task (the construction of the WebQuests),while taking into consideration three main conditions: (a) the comprehen-sion of concepts, (b) the interaction with subjects (building knowledgebased on discussions and debates), and (c) the production of new ways ofunderstanding (WebQuest designs).

This component is divided into two integrated modules. The first facili-tates preservice teachers’ active participation in the recognition and recon-struction of the concepts and research practices needed to develop aWebQuest. The second improves students’ communicative competence bydesigning, developing, and presenting their projects. Preservice teachers puttheory into practice, experiencing meaningful learning since they will vali-date what they have studied through the WebQuest.

Formative GoalsThe formative goals of this component focus on students’ learning compe-tences and abilities to comprehend, recognize, and suggest new ways oflearning and teaching in different contexts and environments (GiraldoRamırez, 2000). Formative assessment plays an important role here, sincestudents use some learning principles related to self-assessment (to enhancetheir general and communicative competences), peer-assessment (to gener-ate interactions and communicative acts), and teacher assessment (to agreewith the teacher’s strategies and methods that promote language learningin context). According to this, some goals planned for this componentinclude:

� Gain self-learning regulation;� Develop linguistic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic sub-competences;� Promote oral and written production and comprehension of texts; and� Develop critical and reflexive thinking and reading.

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Learning GoalsThe learning goals of this component offer students the linguistic, cultural,and social bases needed to comprehend and produce English texts in differ-ent activities and tasks. This works like a system inside the curricularsystem that pretends to address problematic situations during the learningprocess. That is why students develop a classroom research question, basedon their experience and exposure to conceptual readings. Students then tryto find possible answers by developing WebQuests (using the structure pre-viously explained). According to this, some learning goals include:

� Comprehend, paraphrase, and summarize opinions, feelings, and cul-tural and social needs, both orally and in writing;

� Express and support ideas, opinions, agreements and disagreements;� Read critically texts found on the web; and� Improve the language level to reach an A2 level.

Why We Chose to Use WebQuests

Raul A. and Juan Diego share similar perceptions and views of the educa-tional situation in the Colombian context. In addition, they agree with theSchool of Education’s Integrated Pedagogical Model’s idea of finding “newways” of learning and teaching languages in context. They consider tech-nology and learning environments can help students potentiate their learn-ing (Cope & Kalantzis, 2007) as well as improving the teachers’ formation.

The use of WebQuests in this component aims to develop a set ofstructured and intentional inputs (linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic,technological, etc.), which guide students to autonomously complete acommunicative task. This task, in turn, is linked to a problematic question,formative and learning goals, and the general and communicative compe-tences. In order to complete the task, students need to interact with others(classmates, teachers, and the Web itself) and use their critical thinking andformative assessment tools as part of an iterative process that enables themto improve their work.

Finally, WebQuests help develop a differentiated classroom (Kelly,2000) where content, process, and product combine to facilitate leaning. Inthis context, learning is a guided process where students develop their ownprojects (using the communicative task structure) and become aware oftheir linguistic and learning weaknesses and strengths. In this component’scontents, based on the manipulative, heuristic, and imaginative language

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functions (Bachman & Palmer, 1996), students learn and develop the activ-ities by proposing a question, seeking literature to support it, and develop-ing activities and tasks. During the process, students use cognitive andmetacognitive communicative activities to develop the strategies and skillsneeded to complete the communicative task. Finally, the completion of thistask empowers them to comply with the product (i.e., the WebQuest itself),demonstrating their competence in the use of the language they havelearned as part of a system.

THE WORK IN COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE III:

CONCEPTUALIZING AND DESIGNING WEBQUESTS

We will describe what Juan Diego and Raul A. did in each of the modulesand discuss some of the decisions for the different activities of the compo-nent. Then, to illustrate the main activities from every module, we willpresent first-person accounts by Liliana, Raul, and Laura Mildrey.

The Instructors and Their Students

A key component of all our work during the component and all our writ-ing has been acknowledging who we are. As Mora Velez (2010) argued,researchers bring all their personal experiences to their work. Therefore,this is the moment when we will introduce ourselves.

Raul Alberto Mora (or, as his students call him, “Dr. Berry”) is an assis-tant professor at the Faculty of Education. In addition to teaching, he ispart of the MESL Study Group (Methodologies and Evaluation in SecondLanguage) and co-chairs the Student Research Group on Second Lan-guage (SRG-L2). As a result of his education, Raul A. has become deeplyinvested in issues of social justice and critical pedagogy within second lan-guage learning and teaching. He is also very interested in qualitativeinquiry as an object of study, in the notion of literacy inside and outsidethe classroom, and how technological mediation affects everyday literacies.In his personal life, Raul A. is a declared techno fan, constantly listeningto podcasts whenever his iPodTM is on. He loves reading and enjoying thenightlife of his hometown along with his wife, another university professor.Raul A. lived abroad for eight years in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois(United States), while pursuing his graduate education.

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Juan Diego Martınez is a professor at the Faculty of Education, just likeRaul A., he chairs the MESL Study Group, where he does research on dif-ferent topics dealing with learning and teaching processes. His most recentresearch has tackled issues of technology mediation in physical, virtual,and blended environments. Besides his interest in technology, he enjoysreading, promoting, and doing discourse analysis to various texts comingfrom different sources. Juan Diego is very invested in researching aboutsecond language methods and methodologies and teachers’ assessmentpractices. On his more personal side, he is basically an adult who likeshi-tech gadgets, video games, and sports. He loves going to the cinema,dancing, and listening to salsa music. Like Raul A., he also had the chanceto live and teach abroad, in Bath, United Kingdom.

Liliana Alzate-Perez (Lili to her friends) is a third-year English-SpanishEducation major at UPB-Medellın. Liliana served as the student represen-tative to the Faculty of Education Council in 2011. At present, she is amember of SRG-L2 collaborating on a research project about teacher edu-cation. Liliana believes that education is the best investment one can makein a country because it contributes to improving its inhabitants’ quality oflife. As a future teacher, she wants to do research projects that will includepeople with diverse educational needs in the educational system and cre-ates new strategies to enhance the quality of teaching.

Raul Gomez-Yepes is also pursuing his BA in English-Spanish Educa-tion at UPB-Medellın. Raul, like Liliana, was a student representative in2011. Raul has also joined MESL to work with Juan Diego and other fac-ulty members on a technology mediation study. He is very interested inlearning languages, so he has devoted several years to learn English. Hehas also started to learn his third language, Portuguese, this timecompletely on his own.

Laura Mildrey Zapata-Monsalve is also majoring in English-SpanishEducation. Laura Mildrey says she is very passionate about teaching. So,she hopes to be highly prepared in the academic and personal aspects ofteaching to convey her future students everything that she has learned. Shelikes being immersed in research because of the enjoyment and learningopportunities that it provides.

The First Module: Conceptualizing WebQuests

In this section, we will discover some of the conceptual underpinningsbehind the component and how we expanded the traditional framework

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for WebQuests. Then, we will read about the process of writing a researchquestion for the component, including the narratives by Liliana, Raul, andLaura Mildrey.

Why We Needed to Complicate the FrameworkMost students reduce language learning to the linguistic aspects, overlook-ing how language transcends linguistics to become the instrument forlearning. Some traditional methods place grammar as the core of languagelearning, disregarding the importance of its use in context. Using Web-Quests in Communicative Competence III helped us create a more inte-grated paradigm where students and teachers interacted based on acommunicative task.

Juan Diego has argued that communicative activities and tasksshould facilitate comprehension, interaction, and production of oral andwritten texts as part of the students’ communicative competence (VallejoGomez & Martınez Marın, 2011). Thus, we wanted to demonstrate howWebQuests moved from a structured reflexive act into a solid task byillustrating the essential steps a good communicative activity: (a) com-parative and contrastive analysis of theories, (b) analytical and reliableresearch (in this case, Internet-based), (c) production of varied writtentexts, (d) self, peer, and teacher assessment, and (e) the completion ofthe communicative task.

Features of Our Conceptual FrameworkThrough this component, Raul A. and Juan Diego created an integral lan-guage learning proposal that increases student autonomy and self-directedlearning, understood as a collective performance. The component drawsfrom social constructivism, communicative competence, and communica-tive tasks.

The Role of Social Constructivism. According to social constructivism(Dıaz Barriga Arceo & Hernandez Rojas, 1998), knowledge acquisition isone’s comprehension of reality in relation to previous knowledge andsocial interactions. As Martınez Rodrıguez (1999) argued, knowledge stemsfrom social interactions acquired by symbols or signs (languages in thiscase) that enable self-consciousness and complex thinking. The idea ofsocial constructivism (Chaiklin, 2003; Hedegaard, 2005) is then re-vali-dated since every learner builds his/her own knowledge base by sharing theinformation flow in his/her context with others. Recognizing the impor-tance of collaborative and participative work in this component, students

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had to seek information, read critically, write drafts, present findings, andguide discussions. All activities faced students to instructor and peerassessment moments.

The Role of Communicative Competence. To understand communicativecompetence (Bachman & Palmer, 1996), one must understand the influenceof the organizational and pragmatic competences. While the organizationalcompetence deals with language structure (grammar, semantic, syntactic,lexical, phonetic, phonological, orthoepic, and orthographic) and discoursebuilding (textual competence), the pragmatic competence explains how lan-guage operates according to a particular context. Both of these compe-tences are part of the larger sociolinguistic competence (Council ofEurope, 2001a), which explains the ideational (expressing ideas and emo-tions), manipulative (getting an expected answer or fulfilling an expectedtask), and heuristic (using the language to learn, teach, or solve problems)language functions. It also relies on social aspects like dialects, languageregister, and socio-cultural background for collaborative and cooperativeknowledge building.

The expected outcome of this mixture, effective learning in specific con-texts, necessitates an autonomous learning environment where students canovercome language difficulties and achieve the communicative objective:knowledge construction. Thus, we argue that one can only consider com-municative competence as a thinking process (comprehension, interactionand production) that places language, concepts, subjects, and context as anintegrated system.

Bringing All the Elements TogetherJuan Diego and the students read selected texts about social constructiv-ism, communicative competence, language skills, technology mediationand WebQuests. In the next step, they reflected upon and searched for lit-erature about the most common difficulties Colombian English learnersusually faced. Then, they set their general area of work and a topic. Withall this information, they started creating the questions. They discoveredthat not all questions are researchable, practical, or likely to be answered.

Subsequently, the students realized that there should be a balanceamong the topic, the research conditions, and the actual likelihood of com-pleting the research topic before writing a good question. We believe thatworking on a research question and the ensuing statement was very rele-vant at this stage. We would argue that early practice crafting questionswill be beneficial for the students’ future research endeavors.

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The statement was an issue surrounding their learning practices. Toframe the statement, we used guiding questions such as, “What is thematter to be studied?,” “What is the source of the problem?,” “Whyis it important to address this problem?,” and “Why is this importantfor English learners and myself?” They noticed, once again, that thiskind of academic activity is not easy. They also recognized that itsexecution helped improve their reflexive and critical reading as well astheir communicative competence (in their morphologic, semantic, andpragmatic functions). Furthermore, they realized that learning Englishstructures or grammar is not the goal, but part of a system to acquireand comprehend situational knowledge. The students’ questions andproblems that we will present below become then the product of theirreflections.

Liliana’s StatementThe research question for my WebQuest project was, how can affectivestrategies facilitate meaningful learning in English language learners?

The issue of affective strategies motivated me because, in my opinion,attitudes and emotions can either foster or hinder how students assimilatenew information and knowledge. For example, the affective componenthas greatly affected some English language learners because they cannothandle the pressure of learning a whole new structure. We also need toconsider the importance and effects of a good relationship between tea-chers and students. If there are difficulties, they can often cause frustra-tions that hinder the students’ learning processes. In addition, some peoplebelieve that teachers rarely pay attention to how affective strategies influ-ence meaningful learning.

We must point out that, thanks to new educational research projects,social and affective strategies are gaining wider acceptance in second lan-guage education. Examples of these social interactions include immersingoneself in a culture (social strategy) and rewarding oneself (affectivestrategy).

Raul’s StatementI proposed the question, How can we use discursive competence to helpELLs improve their writing fluency?

I linked the question and the WebQuest to the pragmatic competence.Specifically, I focused on the discursive competence, which looks at ele-ments like coherence, cohesion, thematic organization, and logicalsequencing. While those elements are very useful when writing, I have had

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difficulties applying them in my own writing. The CEFR (Council of Eur-ope, 2001a) describes this competence in relation to text design as,

[One’s] knowledge of the design conventions in the community concerning, e.g.: how

information is structured in realising the various macrofunctions (description, narra-

tive, exposition, etc.); how stories, anecdotes, jokes, etc. are told; how a case is built up

(in law, debate, etc.); how written texts (essays, formal letters, etc.) are laid out, sign-

posted and sequenced. (p. 123)

I related the question to my own experiences as a writer and relied on aprevious Internet search for studies related to writing difficulties (e.g.,Mojica, 2010). As a result of this work, I believe that we have to providedifferent kinds of assistance for ELLs to address the complexity of learninga second language.

Laura Mildrey’s Research QuestionThe question I proposed was, How can English teachers reinforce the lexicalcompetence with English language learners? This question intends to addressthe lexical competence. There are as many definitions of this competence asusers of the language. For instance, one definition of this competence is, “theknowledge of, and ability to use, the vocabulary of a language” (Council ofEurope, 2001b, p. 110). This definition reflects that knowledge is not enoughto foster a competence, and it implies using lexicon. A practice method thatlinks those actions and improves this approach is the WebQuest.

English language learners have difficulties in acquiring new vocabularyduring their learning process. In some cases, they look for different strate-gies to improve this competence. Some of them find successful ways tolearn faster whereas others ignore this problem. We must also take intoaccount that the acquisition of vocabulary occupies a key place in learninga second language. If a person learning a language does not make an effortto properly use lexicon, it will be difficult to communicate with otherspeakers of that language.

During the language learning process, English teachers must keep inmind that their students should, “[. . .] have more than grammatical compe-tence ... they also need to know how language is used by members of aspeech community” (SIL International, 1999, para. 1). Thus, they need toconvey this language in a very clear and simple way and practice continu-ously. Furthermore, it is important to remember that language teachingnot only consists of giving a grammatical structure. It also implies practic-ing grammar on a daily basis and offering a wide range of possibilities inorder to reinforce lexical competence.

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The Second Research Module: Designing the WebQuests

This section will describe what Raul A. and the students did during to cre-ate the WebQuests, including the first-hand accounts from Liliana, Raul,and Laura Mildrey.

Analyzing and Linking the Questions and Competences within theWebQuest StructureAn important part of this experience was how the students materialized thequestions and the competences into an actual WebQuest. Although thisconnection was clear to Raul A. and Juan Diego, it would have been fool-ish to assume that students would see it immediately. Therefore, beforelooking at resources, we spent two weeks discussing how to link the stu-dents’ questions and their competences to an engaging WebQuest task.

Given the advantage of a small-sized group, we devoted one whole classsession to each student’s proposal. During the sessions, each student firstsummarized what he/she had written in his/her draft. We then engaged ina discussion about how they thought their questions and competenceswould connect to the different elements of the WebQuest. In this reflectionprocess, the students began to discover that the competence was not thetopic of the WebQuest. Instead, they would reinforce the competence inwhich they were interested through very engaging tasks and activities.

A Critique of ELT-Based WebQuestsAfter the analysis, we assessed examples of WebQuests tailored for EnglishLanguage Learners (ELL). Prior to the critique, students read Sox andRubinstein-Avila (2009), focusing on the rubric they proposed for their dis-cussion of the WebQuests. The students used these rubrics to review theseWebQuests and then write a short critique.

The critiques found that the layouts were not too appealing for childrenor teenagers and the tasks were too grammar-oriented and not engagingenough. As Laura Mildrey explained, “the task contains specific knowl-edge which the student could copy and paste out of a web page. Besides, itneither demands critical thinking from the students nor challenges them tobe creative” (Global Critique about Trip to London WebQuest, April 7,2011). The outcomes were very simplistic and did not reflect the nature ofwhat students should achieve through a WebQuest. Raul said, “this Web-Quest is not a good example of how a good one can be done, but it is agood one to explain how it cannot be done” (Review of Teen MagazineWebQuest, April 7, 2011).

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Defining a Good WebQuest for ELLsAs a conclusion of our critique, we proposed three specific features thatWebQuests for English language learners should include:

� Plenty of information and support in terms of grammar and vocabulary(Sox & Rubinstein-Avila, 2009). Although the WebQuest should neverbe grammar-based or vocabulary-based, we agreed that plenty of scaf-folding (Hromnıkova, 2008; Sviridon, 2008; Wang & Hannafin, 2008)was necessary for all students to complete their tasks successfully.

� Creative and engaging tasks, taking into account the students’ ages. Infact, Raul’s proposal proposed a variation for his own WebQuests, towhich we will return when we present his account.

� Some criteria regarding what constitutes quality websites. We deter-mined three that we would follow in our selection process:1. Content (Is it reliable? Is it updated often? Is there an effort to

include good information and links?)2. Layout (Is it clean and organized? How are the sections divided?)3. Visual (Is it easy to follow, in terms of information and graphics?).We also agreed that the process of selecting quality websites helps vali-

date teachers’ expertise in the field and opens a space to help studentsselect information carefully.

The Design ProcessCreating the WebQuests was the final stage of this module. Studentsworked on their WebQuests for the last three weeks of instruction. Duringthese sessions, the students conferred with the instructor about the deci-sions they made. In the conferences, Raul A. would ask the students ques-tions to guide students’ thinking about their WebQuests, while occasionallyproviding suggestions for activities or resources.

In this component, all students created their WebQuests using the tem-plates from ZunalTM (http://zunal.com), a website specialized on Web-Quests (Our other two cohorts have used websites such as WeeblyTM

(http://weebly.com) and WixTM (http://wix.com), which offer other alter-natives for more media-savvy students). In addition, students had to writean abstract of their WebQuests. During the final exam period, studentshad to present their WebQuests to the rest of the class. They also had toanswer questions from Juan Diego and another professor. We included theexperiences of writing the abstract and presenting the WebQuests as partof the component to continue the process of introduction to academic dis-course that Juan Diego had started in the first component. Now, Liliana,

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Raul, and Laura Mildrey will share what they did and how they puttogether their WebQuests:

LilianaI designed my WebQuest (Alzate-Perez, 2011) around social strategies.I believe that we can facilitate learning through knowledge and acceptanceof different cultures, including ours. I find it important for us, as futureEnglish teachers, to recognize the importance of this issue and create strat-egies to make it a positive tool for meaningful English language learning.The goal for my WebQuest was to create methodological strategies thatconstantly motivate students and make them feel good about themselvesand their surroundings.

Before I started working on the WebQuest, I had to find a way toengage the students. Since the main topic of this WebQuest was aboutthe culture of Medellın, it would be useful to search for images of Medellınin the media. So, I looked for a few YouTubeTM videos with stereotypi-cal images of Medellın. I used the video clips to ask students whatthey thought about these videos, if they agreed with their messages, andwhat they would show about the city if they had a chance. So, the taskI chose was to create a documentary about Medellın from the students’viewpoint.

RaulI started wondering how those classic fairy tales we have read since child-hood would be useful for school children to write alternative stories andbecome more creative writers. But, I also knew that all children in a class-room might not be at the same proficiency level in English.

So, I had to consider children’s ages, school level, and previous knowl-edge as part of whatever task I wanted to create. I used the English as aForeign Language standards (Ministerio de Educacion Nacional, 2006)and the Common European Framework (Council of Europe, 2001a) as myconceptual references. With that in mind, I created two different processes:one for English learners on A1-A2, and another for B1-B2 (IndependentUser) (Council of Europe, 2001a, p. 24) learners. As the product of thisanalysis, the task for my WebQuest (Gomez-Yepes, 2011) involved askingstudents to rewrite Hansel and Grethel (Brothers Grimm, 1812). Specifi-cally, they had to write an alternate version of the story from the point ofview of the witch (Jenkins, 1992). I designed two different versions of thistask so that the story would be different depending on the English levelthat the students and the teacher would agree on.

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Laura MildreyFor my WebQuest (Zapata-Monsalve, 2011), students will create a televisionshow I called Knowing a person and his/her culture, which vividly illustrateshow people live in different cultures. Each student will do research on a spe-cific person and culture from four possible choices: Addis Abbaba (Ethiopia),Makati (Philippines), Adelaide (Australia), or Freiburg (Germany). In orderto carry out the task, students had to follow and use a series of resources.

It is significant to remember that all the activities included in the taskreinforced skills and competences such as lexicon, listening, speaking, andwriting. Additionally, these activities will increase reflection and creativitybecause they are based on the culture that each student would choose. Intheir final presentation, students should dress, act, talk, and behave like aperson from the specific culture that they researched.

WHAT THIS EXPERIENCE MEANS FOR TWO

TEACHER EDUCATORS

In Communicative Competence III, Raul A. and Juan Diego wanted tocreate a space where classroom roles would move toward a collaborative,self-regulatory relationship (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). In this sense, ourwork with WebQuests has created a differentiated proposal (Meirieu, 1986;Perrenoud, 1996), where learning is an active process set by communicativeactivities and tasks. This proposal, then, reinforces student autonomy andgenerates knowledge. This has enabled learners to discover the meaning ofwhat they are learning while consciously using their cognitive, metacogni-tive and socio-affective strategies (Oxford, 1990). Regarding this concep-tual shift, Juan Diego added,

We had also thought of developing communicative activities (inputs-outputs) and tasks

(projects) since they fit with all the theories that support our proposal. Learners had

more agency in their performance of the communicative function since they could

restrict the topic, environment, contexts, needs and code (in terms of linguistic, prag-

matic and sociolinguistic competences) to accomplish the task. We guided our students

to develop communicative activities inside the expected communicative task (Web-

Quest) to potentiate our students’ communicative competence. At the same time, the

students were developing different communicative activities (using different visual and

auditory resources) which helped them, and their possible WebQuest users, improve

their language and knowledge level.

Regarding how our proposal contributes to the existing literature, RaulA explained,

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In the context of preservice teacher education, WebQuests should not just be a tool to

enhance the learning experience. Preservice teachers should have a hands-on experience

about what it means to find information and resources to give to their students when

they are in their classrooms. Our proposal for WebQuest also opened a space to vali-

date the concepts that we want our prospective teachers to incorporate into their con-

tent knowledge. Including WebQuests within our components is also beneficial because

students learn to gain more confidence in the use of different technologies in their

classrooms. (Koc & Bakir, 2010)

The Aftermath

So far, Juan Diego and Raul A. have worked with two more cohorts. Thecohort in the second semester of 2011 developed their WebQuests in coop-eration with a group of preservice English teachers from the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign. The experience, albeit very successful,raised questions about what it means to engage in collaborative, asynchro-nic online projects. Writing this chapter coincided with the third cohort. Inthis version, the overall structure of the component and modules is a lotstronger. There are new readings that the instructors have found, and thechallenge of a larger cohort (14 students this time) has offered new alterna-tives for collaborative work within the class.

There is also a concern about affording the other cohorts the samechances that Liliana, Raul, and Laura Mildrey have had. This book chap-ter should not be an isolated event. That, if any, is the biggest challengethat Raul A. and Juan Diego have set for themselves: How to turn learn-ing how to create WebQuests and writing about the experiences into paral-lel and complementary processes.

Finally, there is the larger question of where to take the conceptualframework next. The idea of technology mediation is not going anywherein the immediate future (Mora, 2011a), so there is confidence that the pro-posal from Communicative Competence III will remain strong for a fewmore years. Until then, Raul A. and Juan Diego will continue finding newways to integrate other technological options to this proposal.

WHAT THIS EXPERIENCE MEANS FOR THREE

PRESERVICE TEACHERS

Liliana, Raul, and Laura Mildrey have become more assertive and criticalin their decision-making. Our intention was to break the traditional

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paradigm where teachers control what must be learned and taught.Instead, the students started to manage their own learning, working ontheir weak aspects and potentiating their strengths. The ultimate goal wasto develop a significant, efficient and long-lasting learning process. Wemanaged to accomplish this because we planned the activities in this com-ponent relying on cognitive, metacognitive and socio-affective learningstrategies, as well as formative assessment strategies, which fostered auton-omous learning (Martınez, 2010).

Another effect of this proposal was that Liliana, Raul, and LauraMildrey relied more on their changeable and flexible cognitive structure,thus becoming more creative (Robinson, 1990). Their WebQuest projects,where they used different techniques, strategies, and resources to manageto build them, are the strongest evidence of their creativity. At the sametime, they were able to increase their critical thinking and reflexive com-prehension skills. As a result, they earned some learning autonomy andindependence, reinforced in their active participation as co-authors in thischapter.

Liliana, Raul, and Laura Mildrey wrote their own reflections aboutwhat this means for other preservice teachers. Liliana said,

Preservice teachers begin their practice with a wide range of different experiences, opi-

nions, and conceptions about the second language teaching and learning processes.

Many of them are unaware of the different scenarios they will face. However, I think

such tools as WebQuest can facilitate their practice by helping their students develop

their creativity and logical thinking.

Raul argued,

The WebQuest is a new and innovating tool that teachers can use in their classrooms.

Children can find it more attractive and there are plenty of possibilities for creative

thinking and learning English more interactively. In my opinion, the fact that preser-

vice teachers are learning how to take the new technologies to the class is a significant

advance on their education. Education has to move at the same speed as the technolo-

gies available in changing contexts.

Finally, Laura Mildrey said,

I think implementing this proposal with preservice teachers could widen their tradi-

tional teaching methodologies beyond doing grammar exercises or listening to a song

in the class. Preservice teachers will benefit from using these web-based activities

because they will learn to find good resources to develop students’ tasks and learn

about different topics.

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The Aftermath

Two semesters after the component finished, and empowered by the writ-ing and presentations, Liliana, Raul, and Laura Midrey have alreadystarted expanding this idea beyond Communicative Competence III andinto other components. They are also considering how to link this activityto the Spanish curriculum, an idea that we all agree could open very differ-ent options for the preservice methods components. At this moment, thisnew direction that they are proposing is in its infancy. However, there iscertainty that there will be more research and publications stemming fromthese student-led initiatives soon.

CODA

Plenty of events have happened to all five of us since the beginning of thecomponent back in January, 2011 and the writing of these final lines in ourchapter. At first, having one book chapter and two conference presentationsas outcomes of our experience was somewhat inconceivable. After all, theidea of coauthoring papers was rather uncharted territory for us. For eachof us, doing this has changed our lives in many ways. For Liliana, Raul, andLaura Mildrey, this marks the beginning of three very illustrious teachingand research careers. For Raul A. and Juan Diego, this has not only streng-thened their collegial and personal relationships, but they now see them-selves as mentors instead of just “professors” or “instructors.” Sharing ourexperiences with a global audience has opened our minds to new “Quests.”What they will be and look like, it is hard for us to tell. But, we all knowthat this entire experience, from devising the component to creating theWebQuests to writing about it, is an event that, as a good WebQuest shoulddo, has encouraged us to pursue even more real and engaging tasks in ourlives as scholars, teachers, and, why not, better human beings.

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