WEBQUEST IN THE SPANISH UNIVERSITY CONTEXT: FINDINGS AND FUTURE STEPS

This paper reports on the WebQuest’s (WQ) use, dissemination and perception experienced by Spanish universities.
WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. Appropriate use of WQ implies “to scaffold advanced cognition by integrating the ‘ill-structured’ nature of the World Wide Web with a process that guides novices through decisions and experiences that characterize experts’ behaviors.” It can be said that WQ strategy enjoys, nowadays, a recognized status of learning strategy in the educational world.
WQ concept was originated in a higher education context, but it is a strategy that has been used predominantly in primary and secondary education. Nevertheless, its interest for university education has been renewed since the establishment of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and its competency-based teaching system.
In this paper, the authors make a brief review of the theoretical aspects and the key findings about the impact of the WQ implementation in different areas of knowledge in higher education and consider data collected within an international as well as in the Spanish research context.
The theoretical review is complemented with a summary of the results from two surveys. The first one examines the role of university organisms with competences in university teacher training in the methodological integration of ICT in its practice and, specifically, in the dissemination of WQ. The second survey picks up the opinion of an expert group in order to know, among other things, their views on the advantages and disadvantages of this method, its acceptance by the students and its use in connection with the implementation of the EHEA.
The paper concludes with a reflection on the appropriateness of WebQuest methodology in higher education and on the necessary steps to take in order to improve its use, dissemination and sharing, particularly in a web 2.0 context.