Abstract:

A web quest is an activity in which students utilize World Wide Web resources to obtain information that is then used in a group project. Students use web quests by finding information online about a specific subject. Several parts should compose web quest: introduction, task, process, resources, evaluation and conclusion. The introduction should be a paragraph written in the second person, addressing the student directly and explaining the background information and their role in the quest. The task should start by writing a paragraph explaining what must be accomplished by the quest. The process should also provide the Internet links, making a list of sites which are kid safe, and authoritative on the subject, avoiding sites with a lot of ads or that have confusing layouts. In the resource part all the links and resources selected for the students to use should be listed. The evaluation should be based on the criteria included in the web quest. Establishing grading guidelines insures against bias, and allows students to know the standards on which their work will be graded. The conclusion should summarize the entire web quest. It should provoke further thought on the subject matter and encourage students to reflect on what they have learned.
In this study Industrial Engineering students, in the subject of Science and Environmental Technology, used a web quest, as teaching strategy, to improve the skills for the management of scientific database. This study was carried out, during the fourth and fifth year course, of Industrial Engineering, and students had to make a practical work, consisting in reviewing an actual topic. The study was developed in the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Vigo, with a sample of 200 students. The quality of the works, based on number of references consulted, number of scientific journals consulted, and number of references written in English consulted by the students were compared with those obtained in the previous course where none web quest was used as teaching strategy.

In a previous studied carried out last course in the subject of Science and Environmental Technology it was observed that most of the evaluated Industrial Engineering students did not know how to manage scientific data base, and in most of the cases they did not know how to cope with the information when it is written in English following the structure of a scientific journal. They liked better gaining knowledge, about environmental topics, using the information found in Spanish web sites, without using scientific database.

In this work it was observed that the utilization of the database web quest by the Industrial Engineering Students allowed to the student to gain knowledgment about environmental topics, also improved the management of scientific database, and in most of the cases increased the amount of literature consulted in English in comparison with the results obtained in the previous course. This study demonstrates the positive impact of web quest on the learning performance of environmental topics by engineering students.

Keywords:

Industrial Engineering, students, environmental topics, database, web quest.