CC BY
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PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES / «ШУШМУМ-ШУГМаУ» #18(177), 2023
PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES
УДК 378.147:811
Zelenin H.
Ukrainian Engineering Pedagogics Academy ORCID: 0000-0003-1274-2311;
Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Foreign Language Training, European Integration and International Cooperation, Ukrainian Engineering Pedagogics Academy
Ukraine
DOI: 10.24412/2520-6990-2023-18177-8-10
USING WEBQUESTS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM AT AN ENGINEERING
UNIVERSITY
Abstract.
The article deals with the problems of applying and specific features to implement an effective and relevant WebQuest technique, considered as an effective instrument to achieve successful foreign language teaching at an engineering university: to develop foreign language professional communicative competence; the stages of the WebQuest project have been listed; some difficulties and problems arising while working on the WebQuest have been highlighted and certain ways to solve them have been suggested.
The development and testing of WebQuests has shown the effectiveness of this technique in the context of foreign language teaching to engineering students. It satisfies the needs of modern students in online technologies as learning tools and can provide training offuture graduates who are able to cope with the challenges faced by engineers in their professional practice in the modern environment.
Keywords: WebQuest, digitalization, a foreign language teaching, an engineering university, professional competency.
Problem statement. The globalization processes as well as an active development of technologies have a significant impact on almost all spheres of life, and higher engineering education is included. To respond to these challenges, the system of engineering education in Ukraine, as well as all over the world, has been undergoing significant modifications to fully meet the requirements of modern society. In the higher engineering education, there have been changes in learning objectives, new methods and technologies have been applied, the essence of the learning process has been greatly influenced by online technologies, the design and filling of the educational environment have been modified.
In this context, the focus of pedagogical research is on technologies responding, on the one hand, to the students' needs and, on the other hand, that can provide training of future engineers who can design new intellectual products nowadays, create successful businesses, solve urgent problems in a highly competitive environment. The educator is now becoming an assistant to the students in the autonomy knowledge production. Today, critical as well as creative thinking, team work, and communication for information are giving way to simple and direct memorization of earlier studied content. In the academic process, the most important skills are those of independent generation of knowledge based on search and analysis, i.e., research activity. Therefore, on the one hand, the foreign language teacher at an engineering university should develop students' communicative foreign language competence, taking into consideration the communicative skills formation in future professional environment, professional thesaurus development. On the other hand,
the modern approach to training professionals in higher educational institutions requires revising teaching methods in accordance with international practices and standards.
The purpose of the article is to analyze the problems of applying and specific features to implement WebQuest technique at an engineering university.
The statement of the main material. A modern teaching method allowing to effectively solve professional tasks during the foreign language training of future engineers is the WebQuest technology. In accordance with the educators applying abovementioned technology (Department of Foreign Language Training, European Integration and International Cooperation of Ukrainian Engineering Pedagogics Academy, Kharkiv) WebQuest is considered as a challenge assignment built on the role-playing stages, using the Internet information resources to complete it. WebQuest is the most difficult for both students and a teacher, aimed at developing students' analytical and creative thinking skills; the teacher designing the WebQuest should have a high level of subject matter, methodological and in-focommunication competence. The specific feature of WebQuests is the following; all of the information presented on the site (different websites) is designed for students' independent or team work. Due to the active hyperlinks, students do not experience this but work in a single information space for which the exact location of this or that portion of the educational information would not be a significant factor. The student is given the task of collecting materials online on a certain topic, resolve a problem, applying these materials. Having completed the WebQuest, students either present their
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own web pages on the topic or some other creative projects in electronic, written, or spoken form. According to Bernie Dodge, the structure of a WebQuest should consists of the following units: Describing the main roles and a WebQuest scenario, a preliminary work plan, and an overview of the WebQuest; formulating a problem task and submission of the end result; index of information resources; it describes the work procedure to be performed by each participant of the web quest when independently performing the task (stages); the description of the criteria and parameters for assessing the WebQuest; the last unit summarizes the experience, draws up the results and gives a presentation of the final product (project presentation) [1].
WebQuests can either involve a single problem, academic discipline, theme, or be interdisciplinary, B. Dodge identifies three principles for classifying WebQuests: in accordance with the duration of performance (short-term and long-term); by subject content: monoprojects and interdisciplinary web quests; according to the problems solved by students:
Retelling is acceptable as an assignment for a WebQuest, provided that: the students' reports are markedly different from the original materials, that is, they are not simply copying text from the Internet sources into a word processor; students are flexible in choosing what to talk about and how to organize the information they have found; students apply the skills of summarizing, selecting, and processing foreign language information.
The compilation task requires students to search and take information from a variety of sources and put it into a single format. Students can publish the resulting work on the Internet or present it as non-digital product.
A WebQuest based on a puzzle task requires synthesizing information from a set of sources and creating a puzzle that cannot be solved by simply searching for the answer on any particular Web page. On the contrary, it is necessary to come up with a puzzle, the solution of which requires:
- assimilating information from multiple sources;
- compiling the information into a coherent whole by drawing conclusions and generalizations from different sources of information;
- eliminating complicated clues that may at first seem like correct answers to the questions, but do not turn out to be so.
Performing the journalistic tasks, students are expected to collect facts and organize them into a news report, interview, or other journalistic format.
A design task requires students to create a product or a roadmap to accomplish a predetermined goal in a specific frame work. For example, finding a job and planning a career for an engineer, and so on.
Creative product tasks require students to create a specific product in a given format (picture, play, poster, game, song, website, multimedia presentation, and so on). Creative projects are similar to design projects, but are much freer and more unpredictable in their results. More attention should be paid to students' creativity and self-expression in assessing such projects. Consensus building tasks involve finding and presenting different,
sometimes opposing opinions on the same problem and trying to reach consensus.
The goal of a persuasion task is to create a product that is likely to convince someone of something. This task is beyond a simple retelling and requires students to develop arguments for a claim, an opinion, or a solution to a problem based on the material from the WebQuest. The final result of this project can be a letter, an article or press release, a poster, a video, a multimedia presentation, a web page, and so on.
Self-knowledge tasks have the goal of improving students' understanding of themselves, as can be developed through the exploration of online and offline resources. For instance, WebQuest "How to become a successful engineer" aimed at exploring Internet resources related to future careers.
Performing an analytic WebQuest provides students with knowledge in a situation in which they are expected to carefully examine one or more and find similarities and differences in them, as well as deduce the hidden meanings of those similarities and differences, understand the relationship of cause and effect, and discuss what they mean. For example, when comparing the cultures of two countries or peoples, one must not simply identify their similarities and differences, but reflect and speculate on what they mean and what their causes and effects are.
Scientific tasks present students with a series of items and ask them to evaluate or classify them, or to choose a solution from a limited list. WebQuests can be successfully applied in foreign language teaching of future engineers: in various academic specialized disciplines, created for native speakers; or foreign language learners.
The results of the WebQuest, depending on the educational content studied, can be presented in the form of a computer presentation, essay, web page, etc. Working on a WebQuest creates favorable conditions for activating students' creativity, implemented both in content and lexical and grammatical aspects of the foreign language. In addition, the research activity develops and improves students' independent work skills, especially the independent search and selection of information according to the task [2]. The fact that in the process of discussing the final result (presentation) students learn to express their thoughts and opinions, stand up for their point of view, not only plays an important role in developing students' communicative competence in a foreign language, but also allows them to learn how to overcome their own inertia in expressing and articulating their opinions fundamentally. On the other hand, discussing a project implies the ability to listen and respect the opinion of the other person, as well as to accept the opinion of the majority. In other words, such work allows teaching language as a social phenomenon, so it has not only a pragmatic effect (achieving a certain level of language proficiency by students), but also a great general educational significance, namely it develops students' social competence (ability to act independently in real social situations), their responsibility for the end result, the skills of public speaking to prove and argue for the final presentation in a foreign language [5]. As a part of learning a foreign
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language at an engineering university, websites of foreign engineering institutions and those containing information of engineering content in a foreign language could be applied effectively.
Conclusions. The digitalization of the learning process is the best way for students to develop a strong motivation to learn a foreign language for professional purposes. WebQuest technology allows future engineers to learn more in-depth relevant engineering information from authentic sources. Moreover, if the final product is a role-play or simulation, students will be able to try out quite specific professional duties of an engineer. All of this promotes interest in mastering the foreign language of their future professional environment by understanding the relevance of the "Foreign Language" discipline and its practical significance in the development of professional competencies.
References.
1. Using WebQuest as a creative teaching tool at a science and technology university in Taiwan Farn-
Shing Chen & Yu-Wen Hsiao// https://pdfs.seman-ticscholar.org/9437/5870c7d96a15eee51136bc525cef2 bfce2c8.pdf, last accessed 11.06.2023
2. Kayser A. Creating Meaningful Web Pages: A Project-Based Course / Amy Kayser // http://www.ido.rudn.ru/nfpk/ikt/vved.html, last accessed 11.06.2023
3. Naimi-Akbar, I., Barman, L., Weurlander, M.: Engineering teachers' approaches to teaching and learning online. In: IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), pp. 1-5 (2020)
4. Shinde, I.D.D., Prasad, R.: Digital transformation in technical education. In: 22nd International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications, pp. 1-4 (2019)
5. Bryntseva O.V. (2020). Professionally oriented teaching of foreign language writing of engineering students // Problems of Engineer-Pedagogical Edu-cation/№ 69, pp. 85-91 (2020)
