Our last post, “Online Research,” examined ways to find credible sources online. We’ll continue that idea with a WebQuest, designed by Joan Bell-Kaul and Sarah Korpi, to help students find online sources and consider their credibility.

The link below contains a pdf with several WebQuests for a course about Ernest Hemingway. Students find and evaluate sources first about Hemingway, and later about themes, literary devices, etc., in Hemingway’s work.

Hemingway WebQuest

This WebQuest can easily be adapted for other fields of study to both 1) introduce your students to a topic and 2) have your students think critically about where they get information. For example, in a recent revision of Appreciation & History of Music, students use general and scholarly sources to research a favorite composer. Beyond providing information about the composer, they evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the sources they used.

Have you used similar activities in your courses? Do you have additional ideas or examples on how to incorporate WebQuests? Let us know!