Scaffolds in academia refer to tools, strategies, and guides used by educators to assist learners to develop understanding beyond their immediate grasp. They can appear in the form of scripts, teacher assistance, computer tutors, and animated pedagogical agents. Scaffolded learning involves providing assistance to students on an as-needed basis, fading the assistance as learner competence increases. As an instructional strategy, scaffolded learning has been incorporated into Web-based learning environments such as WebQuests and used to help develop critical thinking skills in students.
Published in Chapter:
Understanding the Underlying Constructs of WebQuests
Robert Zheng (University of Utah, USA)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-865-9.ch054
Abstract
One of the challenges in integrating the Internet into classroom instruction is to identify factors that are critical to online teaching and functionally relevant to student learning (Snelbecker, Miller, & Zheng, 2006; Zheng, Stucky, McAlack, Menchaca, & Stoddort, 2005). This study focused on learner and teacher perceptions of WebQuest learning and identified three constructs - constructivist problem solving, social interaction and scaffolded learning - that were perceived by students and teachers as critical to the design and development of WebQuests. The constructs provide a theoretical framework that is not only instrumental to the design and development of WebQuests but also important for the design of effective web-based instruction.