Abstract
Purpose – University students, especially at the freshman level, oftentimes experience challenging difficulties while accessing, analyzing, and evaluating internet information for research purposes. WebQuest provides students with an organized digital tool that allows them to develop a goal-oriented process of online search. Yet, empirical research on this subject is absent from the educational literature of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). This study addresses this gap in the literature towards the goal of enriching the discourse of WebQuest value on advancing university students’ higher-order critical thinking skills within the context of the KSA. The overall aim of the study is twofold: First, it examines the impact of an interdisciplinary WebQuest, as an inquiry-based activity in a social constructivist and scafolded learning environment, on advancing students’ lifelong learning competences and their affiliated skills while developing their business plans and projects. Second, the study uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a conceptual guide to explore the relationship between the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the tool on the one hand and students’ attitude towards WebQuest on the other hand. Design/methodology/approach – Two guiding principles derive the overall design of the study: (1) The implementation of a social-constructivist teaching and assessment approach to learning; (2) Exploring the validity of the Technology Acceptance Model within the context of Saudi Arabia. Towards this goal, a mixed methods case study approach is used with a Likert scale questionnaire that ends with three open-ended questions to collect qualitative data for validating findings from the survey. Findings - The findings suggest that (1) students perceived WebQuest as a well-organized digital tool that facilitates the process of collecting reliable information and sources for their research projects, and (2) there is a statistically significant impact of integrating WebQuest on advancing students’ teamwork, research, and technology and leadership skills. The findings also indicate that the correlation is statistically significant. In addition, it is evident that there are other factors such as faculty feedback, technical support, and providing exemplary models and templates of Web Quest that maximized the successful implementation of the tool in an engaging, active and constructivist-oriented learning environment.
Highlights
AND BACKGROUNDBernie Dodge’s WebQuest (1997), a digital tool that facilitates goal-oriented research on the web, is a timehttp://ijaedu.ocerintjournals.org 207honored, inquiry-based activity that advances students’ development of higher-order thinking skills and employability competencies such as the ability to (1) communicate on the sentence and discourse level, (2) use technology, (3) work in teams, (4) collect, analyze and interpret reliable secondary and primary data and (5) implement ethical decision at the personal, social and professional levels
To measure respondents’ perceptions in this regard, descriptive statistics of the five sub-variables had been performed with an alpha at .962 indicating the reliability of the measuring tool
The findings of the study indicate that WebQuest has a great potential for advancing graduate employability
Summary
AND BACKGROUNDBernie Dodge’s WebQuest (1997), a digital tool that facilitates goal-oriented research on the web, is a timehttp://ijaedu.ocerintjournals.org 207honored, inquiry-based activity that advances students’ development of higher-order thinking skills and employability competencies such as the ability to (1) communicate on the sentence and discourse level, (2) use technology, (3) work in teams, (4) collect, analyze and interpret reliable secondary and primary data and (5) implement ethical decision at the personal, social and professional levels. The design of WebQuest includes structured, procedural components such as an introduction, a task, online sources, a process, an evaluation, and a conclusion. It requires collaborative and guided activities that have the potential to meet the requirements of the project under inquiry and the expectations of the targeted audience. The third component, information sources, presents a collection of reliable and searchable links and Web materials that practically address the targeted project. The evaluation section formulates a reliable assessment strategy, a rubric or a checklist for what is expected of the members of the task to accomplish successfully. The last section, conclusion, sums up the main findings of the project under inquiry (Dodge 1997)
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