Современные тенденции развития иноязычного образования в высшей школе
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- Developing Thinking Skills. O
| Why use WebQuests?
WebQuests are an inquiry-based, learner-centered, project-based approach to teaching, learning, and information inquiry that integrates the power of the Web with sound learning theory and instructional design methods, such as constructivist philosophy; critical and creative thinking questioning, understanding, and transformational learning; scaffolding; cooperative learning; motivation and authenticity [6, 1-2]. Constructivism is a theory of teaching and learning involves the process of questioning, exploring, and reflecting. This theory says that learners should construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through varied experiences. By reflecting on these experiences, students assimilate useful information and create personal knowledge. Creative thinking involves creating something new or original. It's the skills of flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, metaphorical thinking, and forced relationships [1, 1]. Cooperative learning is an approach to teaching and learning where students work in small groups or teams to complete meaningful activities such as solving problems or creating products. Groups share their strengths and address their weaknesses as a team. Cooperative strategies are applied to necessitate each student's input. As students complete more WebQuests they will become aware that their individual work has a direct impact of the intelligence of their group's final product. Student Motivation & Authenticity. Tom March points out to the following strategies that are used in WebQuests to increase student motivation. First, WebQuests use a central question that honestly needs answering. When students are asked to understand, hypothesize or problem-solve an issue that confronts the real world, they face an authentic task. The second feature that increases student motivation is that they are given real resources to work with. Rather than use a dated textbook with the Web students can directly access individual experts, searchable databases, current reporting, and even fringe groups to gather their insights. Developing Thinking Skills. One of the main features of any WebQuest is that student’s deal with questions that prompt higher level thinking. The question posed to students can not be answered simply by collecting and spitting back information. A WebQuest forces students to transform information into something else: a cluster that maps out the main issues, a comparison, a hypothesis, a solution, etc. In order to engage students in higher level cognition, WebQuests use scaffolding or prompting which has been shown to facilitate more advanced thinking. In other words, by breaking the task into meaningful "chunks" and asking students to undertake specific sub-tasks, a WebQuest can step them through the kind of thinking process that more expert learners would typically use. Using WebQuests in our classrooms can help build a solid foundation that will prepare our students for the future by developing a number of skills that tomorrow’s workers will need. No one can ever learn everything, but everyone can better develop their skills and nurture the inquiring attitudes necessary to continue the generation and examination of knowledge throughout their lives. For modern education, the skills and the ability to continue learning should be the most important outcomes. And this is where WebQuest can help use to meet these needs. жүктеу/скачать 9,12 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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