Quest Forward Basics

Sharing Quests

In Quest Forward, sharing a quest with students is as simple as sharing a link. But, sharing quests with students involves more than just sharing a link. Follow these steps to ensure that students are ready to engage deeply and understand expectations for completing quests. 

Step 1: Before determining how and why you’ll use a quest, first establish a routine or structure for sharing quests. This should be a consistent location, like your LMS or Google Classroom, where you can share the link and communicate expectations and deadlines. 

Step 2: Before you post that link, identify the relevance of this quest in the context of what students are learning or have already learned in your class. For students to fully invest in the work of the quest, they need to know how the quest fits in the context of what they are learning, as well as why it is valuable for them to complete. For example,

• share learning goals and/or essential questions for the quest (included in the Basic Information of every quest),
• create an anticipation guide or anticipatory set to facilitate an introduction with students, and/or
• create a graphic organizer to compare/contrast the content and skills students will learn in the quest with their prior knowledge or experiences.

Step 3: Next, identify and determine how students will complete the quest. What will be their process? Consider how students will complete activities within the quest, or multiple quests at the same time or in a sequence. Determine how to communicate information about pacing, timing, and target dates to students. 

Create a one page overview of the quest, progress tracker,  or other graphic organizer that guides students through the activities in the quest and the completion of the artifact (many quests already include a quest organizer; if there is one, customize it!). 

Check out the following OE resources for setting quest completion expectations with students: 

• Playlists and Progress Trackers
• Choose (and Track!) Your Own Adventure 
• Student Choice Board
• Student Choice Menu 
• Student Choice Tic-Tac-Toe
• Get Started with Flexible Pacing

Step 4: Each quest includes the creation of an artifact to show student learning. When you share the link to the quest with students, you should also share expectations for the creation of the artifact. This could include… 

• an artifact rubric with success criteria (can be co-created!),
• leveled exemplars, and/or
• an organizer chunking steps in the artifact process with milestones for completion. 

Step 5: Set up opportunities for feedback and check-ins with students. In order to plan for feedback loops, review the quest and consider when you want students to check-in with you, self-assess with a rubric, compare work with exemplars, or get feedback from a peer. Include this in the directions in your LMS, in your activity instructions in the quest, or in any of the above suggested documents and resources you may create. 

Step 6: Share the link to the quest, as well as the expectations! Check out this Help Center article on the various ways to share quests.