INTRODUCTION

This WebQuest is intended to be carried out through collaborative and cooperative group work (4 students), using the Internet as a basis for your research.

Congested traffic, not enough car parks, stress, fossil energies, air pollution and global warming, waste, absence of green spaces, domestic and industrial effluents,... every day you hear about these problems in cities all over the world.

What should we think about when building cities to help minimize these problems?

How can we have environmentally friendly cities, providing a better quality of life to its populations?

Are you ready to be part of an urban experts‘ team in order to plan a modern ecological city?!!!

So, let´s get to work!! Let's do it!

TASK

Through developing this project you will discover that there are different precautions that need to be taken when planning construction of cities so that they will become sustainable. Right now, there are a few examples of cities being planned  or under construction around the world, in which planners and other technicians tried to minimize today’s cities problems.

Your goal is to create a city plan. A modern place where everyone can have a better life with minimized environmental impacts. You might also include some sketches or pictures of buildings or infrastructures to show your solutions to this city of the future.

Finally, write a text to describe your city adding other characteristics that can´t be seen in the plan. Don´t forget to caption your plan.

You will work in a group of four students, researching the Internet, discussing solutions for your sustainable city, the space planning (how to distribute the buildings, streets, activities, infrastructures… in the city), all based in a collaborative and cooperative work to be able to prepare your final project on Prezi or other multimedia.

You will have 15 days (two weeks) to finish and present your work.

PROCESS

This Webquest should be executed in groups of 4 students following these steps:

1. What are the main problems in today’s cities?

Each student will conduct research on the Internet to enrich their knowledge.

2. How can we minimize those problems?

Each student conducts research on the Internet to find the best solutions proposed for the cities of the future.

3. What kind of city plan and which solutions will be taken in this city?

Group members will discuss their points of view about the best solutions for the city (space distribution of different urban functions, transport, power production…), starting with the definition of the city plan. They can choose a name for their city too.

4. Make the city plan.

Following the examples found on the Internet, using different colours to represent various types of urban functions inside each building/neighborhood/space, the group of students will make a city plan (with its subtitle), in a Word document or, if they are unable to do it, drawing it in a sheet of paper and digitalizing it at the end (i.e. making a picture of it). They might also sketch some special buildings or infrastructures (or show some pictures) to present their solutions to this city of the future.

5. Write a text.

A description of the city plan, explaining the options adopted to make this a sustainable city.

6. Make the presentation.

Make a Prezi (or other multimedia) presentation to show your city of the future with all the solutions you defined to reach it!

RESOURCES

Masdar city (Dubai)

Masdar's long-term sustainable initiatives related to energy, green spaces, the performance of buildings, mobility and agriculture: https://masdarcity.ae/en/learn/overview

Images and videos: https://masdarcity.ae/en/discover/gallery

Masdar city master plan: https://masdar.ae/en/masdar-city/the-city/sustainability

Tianjin eco-city (China): https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tianjin-eco-city_n_806972?guccounter=1#s221860

The future city (China): https://www.archdaily.com/120052/low-carbon-future-city-sba-design

Woven city  (Japan): https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/31221914.html

Smart Forest City Cancun (Mexico): https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/project/smart-forest-city-cancun/

CONCLUSION

As the WebQuest was carried out in group work, respecting the cooperative and collaborative spirit and focusing on students' learning, they should reflect on:

• work developed by each member of the group;
• compliance with tasks and deadlines previously established;
• respecting ideas of other members of the group;
• respecting group work rules;
• critical spirit;
• creativity;
• research capacity;
• autonomy;
• correct and effective use of communication of scientific knowledge;
• use of electronic gadgets.

Evaluation of learning achievements

In this section we will not dive very deep into the underlying educational theories about evaluation and testing: there’s too much out there than we could possibly cover in this small project report.

Instead, we want to concentrate on procedures that enable both students/pupils and their teachers to establish if the learning goals of the Webquest were achieved and, if so, to what extent. We recommend teachers make use of a combined evaluation procedure, that consists of:

1. Statements by learners (after being asked to do so)
   • telling what they learned about the subject (knowledge-oriented self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know that …
   • telling what he/she learned about herself/himself (formative evaluation, in this case, diagnostic self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know about myself that I …
     This pair of basic statements add up to a so-called learner report, in which the pupil/student reflects on what the Webquest brought him/her in terms of acquired knowledge and new personal views and attitudes concerning the subject.

   For instance:

   • ‘I learned that in medieval times the hygiene of people was hardly a concern which helped to let epidemic diseases like the Plague cause so many casualties’ Or:
   • ‘I learned the facts and I know the earth is warming, but I cannot understand why people were so stupid to pollute the world and let it warm up so much.
   • ‘I learned from the information about diseases that this subject is more appealing to me than I would expect in advance: maybe I should consider a medical career’. Or:
     ‘The Webquests confirms what I thought already: I could not care less about the climate and global warming. In fact, I thought it was all a hoax and I still do!’

   This kind of assessment seems more subjective than it actually is: in his standard work on testing and evaluation (and much more), simply called Methodology (1974), Prof. A.D. de Groot described how consistent the student’s self-evaluations appeared to be: when asked again after 5 or 10 years, their evaluation would almost be the same. De Groot advised teachers to use the learner report as a start for joint evaluations, striving for consensus between teacher and student/pupil about the learning outcomes and their value for the learner, but also compared with the learning objectives as stated in the curriculum.

2. The learning achievements are visible in the output produced by the students: it is physical evidence: reports, answers to questions asked in the Webquest, presentations, and performance during presentations (preferably recorded). The teacher completes an evaluation grid stating clearly what the learning outcomes for the student/pupil are. The categories in the grid can be modified by the teacher to cover more precisely the content of a Webquest.

   >We advise teachers to use the grid to start a joint evaluation discussion, aiming at consensus or at least understanding between the teacher and the student/pupil about the learning outcomes: were they achieved (as planned in the curriculum and communicated before the Webquest started) and to what extent? To communicate the learning goals clearly before any learning activity starts, is a transparency requirement that is widely acknowledged in the educational community. The history of making learning objectives explicit goes back to the evaluation ‘Bible’ by Bloom, Hastings and Madaus: ‘Handbook on formative and summative evaluation of student learning’ (1971), a standard work that also served as inspiration for the earlier mentioned Prof. De Groot.

The procedure also applies when students/pupils have worked together on a Webquest. The teacher will ask questions about individual contributions: ‘What did you find? What part did you write? How did you find the illustrations? Who made  the final presentation?’

All the evidence (of learning efforts and outcomes plus joint evaluations) is preferably stored in the learning portfolio of the student, or in any other suitable storage system (folders with written or printed documents, online collection of files, etcetera ).

Changes in personal points of view and feelings are harder to value and here the consensus between teacher and student/pupil about experiences during the learning process provides essential insights.

The grid below gives an example of how the evaluation of the learning process and achievements can be shaped: what kind of reactions to the Webquest does the teacher expect and how valuable are they? Is the teacher capable to explain the value or score allocated to answers or presentations given by pupils? Does the pupil/student understand the evaluation outcomes, and does he/she agree? If an agreement (consensus is not possible, it is still the teacher who decides how to value the student’s work.

Please note that the text in the grid addresses the pupil/student directly: this is important and it is in fact a prerequisite for using such an evaluation grid: it is specifically meant to enable a discussion of learning results between teacher and student and not to communicate learning achievements of learners to others who had no direct role in the Webquest.

Evaluation Grid