Students' evaluation of the implementation of WebQuest in an ESP context

Abstract

Education should be focused on exploring and discovering students’ competences that will allow them to adapt to the society they live in, being nowadays the society of Information and Communication Technology. We have changed the way we live, and therefore the way we learn and for that reason, teachers and education experts should look at the methodology used in schools, and the teaching and learning tools and resources employed to construct our knowledge from a different perspective. This Final Master Thesis, framed within modality 2, deals with the introduction of the WebQuest methodology within a Business and Administration vocational course. This study aims at discovering to what extent using WQ contributes to i) promote students’ positive attitudes towards the ESP learning process, ii) improve students’ digital competence, and iii) to what extent WQ is a methodological effective tool in an ESP learning context. Results obtained lead us to tentative conclusions. It could be deduced that WQ has contributed to develop students’ positive attitudes towards the ESP learning process. Group work has been evaluated in a highly positive way. In addition, students have realised that their digital competence was high but not transferred to their academic life. Reading skills have also been influenced, since students dealt with online texts in an academic context, an aspect uncommonly introduced in the classroom. Finally, the WQ has made students reflect upon the special features of a specific language, thanks to the guided nature of WQ and the integration of online dictionaries. In light of the above, we could conclude that the WQ designed for the purpose of this study has been considered satisfactory by students.