Webbing and its Assessment
by Nancy Grant, Information Librarian, SAD #41
Organizing and Search Terms
Maine's Learning Results includes standards that address the student's need to identify and use information-organizing strategies. Organizing information requires that the student decide key concepts and supporting points. Webbing these provides a topical overview. It requires students to inter-relate information in meaningful patterns, which usually through non-linear thinking. These thoughts are enhanced through non-linear transcription.

Small group or whole class brainstorming is an excellent means for developing a list of key words or search terms. Subsequent webbing of those words into categories provides students with a visual organization of the ideas. Educator feedback is a critical part of this webbing activity. "What about color, size, shape...? How can we connect this with that? Can you split this idea into 4-5 narrower parts?" Repeated practice develops the students' abilities to activate and connect ideas into an organized whole that is more and more sophisticated.

Pre-knowledge and Other Uses for Webs

Another use of webbing is to provide an organized view of "known" information about a proposed research subject. A web is typically preceded by a free-wheeling stream-of-consciousness brainstorm that may be recorded in web format. Brainstorms may also be recorded as a list or series of lists or just random words. This is done on paper, blackboard, overhead projector, or computer screen. Selections are then categorized and grouped into sets of meaningful patterns to form the web. This semantic web can then serve as a basis for:

These activities show students ways of handling information. A web can signal to a student that she has bitten off more than she can chew, or that she has developed too thin a slice of a topic. This can prevent such recognition at a much later time with arduous, painful results.

Some unweblike "webs" evolve as a line down or up or across, indicating hierarchical, inductive, deductive, or sequential thinking. This could be influenced by the subject matter and/or a thinking style. These diagrams or triangle diagrams are often used after webs, especially with science topics, to illustrate a hierarchy.

Up-grading Webbing

Most students need help in seeing possible connections between categories or sets of information in a web. Their webs may look like spokes on a wheel hub, which tend to sprout at the tips. This usually represents broad categories tipped by specific examples. Using action words (verbs), prepositions, or arrows on lines between spokes can build upon this descriptive approach toward a network of interconnections. or associations.

One way to demonstrate logical interconnections within a web is to read aloud a "Choose your own adventure" type book. With notebooks open during the reading, students diagram the emerging plot as a web. Small groups compare, then feed into a class web of the plot. Done in either the library setting or the classroom, the educator helps students note the cross-connections. Students then read and web one on their own, and follow with a group web. Instead of a written story that needs to flipped back and forth, students can design and develop a computerized, interactive "Click your own adventure" using any hypercard type program. An added benefit is the 'behind-the-scenes' experience. This leads to understanding how computers work and how to create a branching program. CD-ROMs and WWW pages will have lost their mystery and gained a "can-do" status.

More Webbing Uses

When three same-topic webs are created during a topic ..... pre-search, mid-search, and end-search .... a continuum of understanding and achievement is visible to the student as well as educator. Meaningful learning and expansion of ideas over time, as made obvious by constructed webs, contributes to sustained intrinsic motivation. The third web can be used as a final test, an assessment of factual or conceptual attainment.

A web can be the means of organizing 'found' material in lieu of outlining or sorting note cards. It represents an expanded focus, which needs it own web of issues, concepts, and associations. As material is found and webbed, it can provide a formative planning aid. Look at the Watson web in the FOCUS ON INTERNET RESEARCH chapter, and imagine another avenue of investigation suggested by the current status of the search. Students can use webs as aids to learning, planning, organizing, relating, selection, and decision-making.

Assessing Webs

Assessment gives webs status, especially in the upper grades. Webbing need not be kid-stuff anymore. It is an opportunity for educators and students to see how they can make improvements in the sophistication of organizational skills. As students refine these skills and see themselves upgraded within the scoring rubrics, they begin to realize the manipulative power they are gaining for handling information.

Educators can create tools to assess these webs. Some criteria to include:

Examples of Webs
The Sea Water web would receive top level evaluation on all but one of the above criteria. [It does not delineate an article or text - so would not utilize that criteria.]

The Lack of Resources for Information Literacy Programs is a problem-solving web. Note the combined effect of arrows and action words, and the relationship's betwen specific and inclusive ideas.

Either web could easily be used as a rich outline for a presentation or written narrative.

October 1997
Maine Educational Media Associaton

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