Scavenger hunts

Scavenger hunts send learners out on a quest for answers and sources of reliable information on the Web or corporate and campus intranets.

This example challenges learners to find specific regulations about medical testing of human subjects. Learners are provided with a link to the appropriate regulations where the answers are found.

In another example, future Visual Basic programmers are challenged to locate the latest code, documentation, and technical tips for a programming library used to manipulate databases.

This example is about diamonds in Colorado. At the end of the scavenger hunt, learners are asked to draw a conclusion using the information they just located.

The example to the left is a sanitized scavenger hunt used in an ethics course.

Here is an example of a scavenger hunt designed for a mobile device, in this case, an iPhone.

It asks learners when the last recorded earthquake occurred in Colorado and its magnitude. Learners are also prompted to enter the URL of the page where the answer can be found.  To simplify search, the activity includes a link to the U.S. Geological Survey Web site, the official source for such information. Note: This example only works in the Safari browser.

About the examples

The first three examples were built using Adobe Dreamweaver and JavaScript.

The fourth example uses a generic Flash shell that reads an external XML file. We used Adobe Flash and Microsoft InfoPath.

The mobile example was built using HTML5 and jQuery.