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WebQuests for Health Professions' Students

Tue, 06/21/2005 - 20:05 — Cynthia Russell

WebQuests are based on constructivist learning principles and are, above all else, inquiry-oriented activities. Read Some Thoughts About WebQuests prepared by Bernie Dodge, the developer of this type of learning activity.

Unfortunately, not many webquests have been prepared for health professions' students. Some webquests focus on health-related issues, but many of these are prepared for pre-higher education learners. Doing a Google search on webquest +health yields 83,200 hits! Refining this by adding nursing as another term brings the total number of hits to 8,080! Still a huge number.

Here are some of the more relevant hits from the Google search:

  • Cultural Learning Activity for Nursing Theory 1 at Lake Sumter Community College Online, prepared by Trisha Economidis, MS, ARNP/Faith Garrett, MSN, ARNP
  • Bones and the Badge for High School Students, prepared by Clarissa Labor - certainly with limited additional work this could be adapted to support learning about forensics in higher education classes
  • Ethics for Healthcare Professionals contained within a WebCT course and identified as an exemplary course project in 2002 - prepared by Kathleen Hernlen and Clare Billman, both of the Medical College of Georgia - see the symbol and link to Login to course as a guest and then follow instructions within the site. This WebQuest was designed for graduate students and covers ethical topics such as end of life, respecting cultural/religious beliefs, and differing desires of a young patient and his parents.
  • Navigating the Mental Health Internet, prepared by David Lukoff. You can visit the course for free, or pay a fee to receive continuing education credits. Note that on 3/5/06 the URL was not operative. If anyone finds where the course has gone, please email and let me know! Here's his course description (and I know a LOT of folks who would benefit from reviewing this excellent resource!):

    • This course is designed to teach mental health professionals the search and navigation skills necessary to use the Internet as a powerful communication and information technology tool. The Internet contains over 1.7 billion Web pages, including vast archives of mental health resources. But with no bibliographic control standards such as those which guide the print world, the Mental Health Internet is difficult to navigate. This course provides hand-on training in Internet search strategies and tools. The course begins with basic navigation training, followed by an Internet Guided tour of clinical resources available for working with patients with substance abuse, PTSD, medical illnesses, depression, and other problems. The next lesson covers search skills to obtain a wide variety of mental health information and resources. In addition, the clinical topics of online therapy, technostress, and Internet addiction are covered. At the end of the course, you will be a confident Internet searcher who can find resources necessary to stay up with developments in the mental health field.
  • Complications of Pregnancy: A WebQuest for Registered Nursing Students in Maternal Child Nursing, by Sharon Brubaker, who authorizes others to modify and use this webquest, with proper attribution. The five complications of pregnancy that are covered in this webquest are placenta previa, abruptio placentae, preeclampsia and eclampsia, preterm labor, and Group B strep.

Here are some webquests found in a column on p. 121 in CIN: Computers, Informatics, and Nursing by William Perry in May/June 2004:

  • Pain Management Webquest for Nurses, by Char Smith at the University of Buffalo. In this webquest, learners investigate and identify some of the barriers, myths and issues impacting effective pain management in patient care.
  • Political Action for Registered Nurses, by Laurie Palmer at Monroe Community College. This webquest helps learners understand how to influence policy makers at the local, state, and national levels by sharing their viewpoints, providing accurate information, and becoming involved. The task for the webquest is to write a letter to a state or federal legislator in support of, or in opposition to, a bill which will affect health care policy or the profession of nursing.
  • What's all this about Evidence-Based Medicine?, by John Epling of SUNY-Upstate Medical University. In this webquest, learners are helped to understand evidence-based medicine better.
  • To Clone or Not to Clone, by Pam Sims at Stony Brook State University of New York. Learners in this webquest analyze the information provided on each of the Internet resources and decide if human cloning should be banned or not.

While some other nursing and health-related WebQuests were noted, many of these were presented in articles and not readily available to those interested in seeing how they work. Seems a little antithetical to the beauty of WebQuests, where everyone in the community learns from reviewing others work!

Some very helpful sites for learning more about and developing WebQuests include:

Topic & Author URL

News and Views about the WebQuest Model by Bernie Dodge

 http://webquest.org

The WebQuest Page by Bernie Dodge

 http://webquest.sdsu.edu

Best WebQuests by Tom March

http://bestwebquests.com/default.asp
WebQuests for Learning by Tom March http://www.ozline.com/learning/index.htm
The Learning Power of WebQuests by Tom March http://tommarch.com/writings/wq_power.php
Building Blocks of a WebQuest http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/staffdev/buildingblocks/p-index.htm


You can find important background material about developing webquests, as well as example webquests at those (and many other) sites.

Click here for some WebQuests for learners in an undergraduate Informatics for Healthcare course, offered in the College of Nursing at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center.