This WebQuest is intended to work searching, presenting, and assessing information about COVID 19 and the other pandemics and epidemics that shocked the world. Students will also receive information to put into practice about how to work in a group, how to make videos/presentations/websites and how to manage peer learning.
The novel coronavirus that causes COVID 19 has quickly taken over our lives. Some commentators are predicting that coronavirus will change the way we live underlying that “things will never be the same”. We will certainly remember this time for the rest of our lives. As we deal with the day-to-day realities of a worldwide disease, many of us are simply waiting for the pandemic to end. But there’s a worrying possibility lurking underneath the present crisis: COVID-19 might never go away. There’s a very real chance the novel coronavirus could become endemic in the human population, much like influenza. If so, we could be living with COVID-19 for a long time.
Humans have always been under assault from pathogens. Before the COVID-19 many other pandemics and epidemics shocked the world (Please see the attachment “Pandemics before Covid 19).
Until the development of the germ theory, and aseptic techniques, people did not understand why you got sick or how to effectively treat diseases.
After the information searching and selection, you will publish your findings as either a PowerPoint or Prezi presentation, a video, a website or any other media that might be feasible for presentations.
Once your presentation/site/video is done, it has to be presented to the rest of the class (all the presentations need to be presented). This is important in order to share information with your classmates. Each group has to evaluate the work done by the rest of the groups. This step will learn you how to peer review.
In the end, each group (peer-reviewed) will have to write an article about the selected diseases, imaging that the article will be published in a scientific newspaper/journal.
Determine what disease you would like to investigate together with the colleagues of your group. We suggest groups of 3 or 4 students.
In this quest, you will only be focused on communicable diseases or those diseases that can be passed from person to person. (This then would exclude genetic disorders and most types of cancer and autoimmune disease). The disease list might be a good place to start if you are unsure what are acceptable topics. The publication is a group project, and ideally, no two groups will be doing the same disease.
You are going to need to find specific information about the disease. You can include more information if you like, but make sure you have the following questions answered somewhere in your presentation. To discourage plagiarism, copy each of the questions on a 5×7 notecard and write, by hand, your findings. Keep track of any websites of sources you have visited. You may want to do this part separately and then reconvene with your group to compare what you have found and decide what will go into the final presentation. You will need to turn in at least 8 notecards.
Decide as a group, how you will present your topic, use the notecards as a guide for determining layout and flow of the information. Your teacher may or may not require an oral component. The following list of resources may help you decide what is the best choice for your group and topic.
Find below some suggestions
Flash Site Builders – these drag and drop editors are very user friendly and most offer limited free options. Sign up for an account and use their templates to build your presentation. Weebly.com, Webs.com, yola.com
Microsoft PowerPoint – Powerpoint is a familiar tool where slides contain images and information and can be advanced forward in a linear fashion. You may have microsoft office on your computer, or you can use docs.google.com or sliderocket to create presentations that can be stored, shared, and published online.
Remember to include a final slide or section that cites resources you used, URLs (web addresses) are acceptable.
If you choose to make videos you can simply use your video camera or mobile phone.
| Extensive/Accurate 5 Points | Present 3 Points | Not evident 1 Point | ||
| Information | history | |||
| symptoms | ||||
| diagnosis | ||||
| prognosis | ||||
| treatment | ||||
| prevention | ||||
| future | ||||
| Presentation | Organization | |||
| Image/design | ||||
| Effectiveness | ||||
| TOTAL (out of 50) | ||||
Finally, you have to imagine being a specialist who has to write an article about the selected disease, bearing in mind that the article will be published in a scientific newspaper/journal.
This step may be quite time-consuming as journals are very technical. You will need to summarize the content by explaining the contents, details and ultimately the outcome or conclusion of the study. This summary should be at least a page in length and can be linked to your project or turned in separately.
Having now completed this WebQuest, you should know more about epidemics/pandemics from different areas of the biological science, but also how to work in a group, how to make videos/presentations/websites and how to manage peer learning. Other than this, you and your classmates will know more about COVID 19, hoping to find a vaccine very soon. Stay safe!!!
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:
For instance:
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.
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.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
t: +357 2466 40 40
f: +357 2465 00 90
e: scool.it@scool-it.eu
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
t: +357 2466 40 40
f: +357 2465 00 90
e: scool.it@scool-it.eu
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
t: +357 2466 40 40
f: +357 2465 00 90
e: scool.it@scool-it.eu
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