The Group Report

QuestGarden will be incredibly useful to people conducting WebQuest workshops because of the potential to easily monitor the progress of the participants. That notion was just potential, not actual, until today as I just completed the Group Report script.

Workshop leaders can request an ID number for their class, and then have their participants attach their lessons to that ID. Once that's done, the instructor can see a list with links to everyone's WebQuest along with a word count for each. I think this will make it much easier to see who's lagging behind or going off on a deadend path.

With this script in place, I went back and took a look at how much the participants got done in my 1-day workshops earlier this year. Not as much as I would have liked... generally around 200 words written. That would be OK if they had continued to add to the WebQuest once the day was over but in most cases, they didn't. There's graphic proof of the difference between a one-shot staff development experience versus some longer commitment with continued help and accountability. Looking at my EDTEC 470 class and the workshop for SDSU faculty I did early this summer, it appears that a complete WebQuest will have somewhere between 700 and 1500 words... at the high end for grad students, lower for kids. In future versions of my own workshop, I'm going to strive for more productivity (while still keeping it fun!).

There's a workshop tomorrow in Lancaster, PA that I wanted to get this ready for. I hope the instructor will find as cool as I do!