Hyper-Quests®
Interactive, Student-Centered, Multimedia/Internet Investigations and Activities
The process of a Hyper-Quest® is most closely associated with student activities that center around four "I" concepts: inquiry, investigation, integration and interaction. The concept of Hyper-Quests can easily include another "I" resource that is becoming the focus of many classrooms; the Internet. Hyper intimates multimedia-based learning and presentation; the process of combining multiple sources from multiple media into a cohesive, interactive presentation. Quest brings to mind action-based images of explorations, hunts, pursuits, undertakings, searches or ventures. A Hyper-Quest provides a framework within which a student operates in an independent learning mode, yet is guided by teacher or student templates to the use of resources that provide appropriate content to the unit of study. These resources will include diverse options such as the Internet, CD-ROMs, laserdiscs, audio, motion video, animation, text, and digital cameras. The process of synthesizing, evaluating and presenting the individual discovery based upon those resources is left to the student.
The creation of a Hyper-Quest centers around the use of HyperStudio as an authoring tool. The teacher (or student) creating the Hyper-Quest should have a comfortable understanding of how HyperStudio handles multiple forms of media and peripherals. The focus needs to be almost entirely on the concept being discussed and discovered during the process of the Hyper-Quest and not diluted by including so many special effects in the presentation to the student that they become distracted from the task at hand.
The purpose of a Hyper-Quest can be multi-faceted. Primarily it serves as a means to conserve student time by focusing their effort to resources that have proven content to support the unit of study. This is not to say that the purpose is to restrict the student's inquiry to a limited number of resources, but rather to give guided practice in using multiple types of resources and perhaps allow any time saved to be used in free-form research areas. Hyper-Quests can be designed to have students work with particular types of resources to demonstrate their value or practice their use. They can focus on a single content area or be designed around integrated concepts. In addition, an effective but simple Hyper-Quest could revolve around the student use of only guided Internet resources using the techniques discussed in these pages.
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