Search results

This chapter outlines an augmented reality project developed as part of a master’s course on eTourism within a curriculum. It discusses opportunities to foster community engagement with local tourism actors and experiential learning for international students. It also contributes to the literature on experiential education in this field. Moreover, the chapter discusses cross-cultural learning implications as international students were asked to study a local destination. Results show how the introduction of a practical project into the tourism curriculum proved to provide better learning of the application of eTourism, and a powerful pedagogical approach to raise global citizenship awareness.

This chapter presents an innovative learning opportunity for tourism students, International Tourism and Hospitality Academy at Sea, that has been in operation for the last 10 years. The program could render itself as a case study of Kolb’s experiential learning theory according to which knowledge is created by transforming experience. Its uniqueness and complexity lie in its diversity. This program has involved between 80 and 130 tourism students yearly from four to six institutions from different countries participating in new scholarly inputs by non-resident professors and instructors.

As its market and society open up, China has transformed itself from a closed agrarian socialist economy to an urban state and an economic force. This has released accumulated tourism demand, led to the development of a diversified industry, and the spread of university and vocational courses in this field. However, the industry faces challenges to recruit and retain staff, with tourism education in higher education blamed for the shortfall in numbers and quality of candidates with suitable purpose, knowledge, and passion to serve. This chapter provides a background to the development of and problems facing tourism education in China, and suggests how to support student engagement and hence the future workforce.

The fourth industrial revolution and its disruptive technological advances are leading to continuous significant changes in the labour markets, which affect employees and employers of all sizes.

Currently, organisations are experiencing considerable skill shortages and talent mismatches: the skills that organisations are looking for do not align with those available in the labour market. This means that matching available candidates on the market with job vacancies is unlikely. In addition, the increasing wage pressure in occupations linked with the most in-demand skills and in high-skills industries has become a reality.

The immaterial assets of a business, such as the competences and skills of its workforce and leaders, are the most significant elements in providing a competitive advantage is a fact no one in the present era would argue against.

While big corporations dispose more resources and capabilities to deal with these challenges, small businesses – considered the foundation of many healthy communities – have limited assets to face such global and complex dynamics.

This chapter acknowledges the significance of small businesses in the global landscape and their key role as ‘job generators’ in enabling an inclusive economic growth in developed as well as in emerging countries. And in this context gives focus to the crucial issue how of small businesses can overcome the skill and the talent gap, and which strategic shifts they can put in place in order to withstand these environmental constraints.

To this end, this chapter provides a broad investigation of international reports discussing the role played by external factors – such as governments and their policy frameworks – and the concept of knowledge sharing.

Moreover, it examines the influence of internal factors. Specifically explored is the key role of the human resources function in attracting skilled graduates, upskilling its workforce, establishing a total reward and talent development strategy and engaging in job design.

This chapter is of particular relevance to owner managers, general and HR managers of small businesses, but also public officials and private institutions. It identifies and offers practical solutions for small businesses that aim to transform themselves to successfully cope with skills shortages and the war for talent in the age of digitalisation.

Inquiry learning points is based on questions and requires students to work independently to solve problems. Instructors are facilitators of learning, not people who give right answers and instructions to learners. Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences Porvoo campus in Finland is a new concept for learning. The lecturers have changed from traditional ones to coaches aiming at new competences with new tools to enhance learning. Their own implementation of inquiry learning has been assessed by themselves with an ongoing self-assessment process as a part of the normal tasks of instructional teams. Self-assessment is a part of action research that aims to develop an organization and the work in it.

The correlation between social background, and future educational and occupational outcomes, is strengthening in the UK. It is getting harder to ignore the implications, as they manifest themselves in our economic and political fabric. Even when talented young people overcome barriers at a particular stage of their journey to the workplace, new barriers present themselves at the next. For example, it has been assumed historically that gaining access to university has a levelling effect: once you are in, you will get ahead. This is a myth. Those, for whom the cost of higher education is most significant, often benefit the least. This chapter explores why this is currently the case, and what can be done to narrow the gap in graduate outcomes by socio-economic background.

This chapter explains the background of the book and begins with an introduction of Jafar Jafari’s tremendous contribution to tourism knowledge creation and education. This is followed by a report on the content analysis of 573 tourism education related articles published in the past 10 years. Results indicated the need for philosophical discussion about the nature of tourism education and the popularity of teaching and learning approaches as a research topic. The two main sections of this book, namely philosophical issues in tourism education and experiential/active learning in tourism education, fit into these two identified issues. A synopsis of each chapter is provided next; and future directions for tourism education research are suggested.

In 1991 Lithuania reclaimed its independence from the Soviet Union and subsequently enlisted its education system as a tool for imparting the democratic skills and worldviews necessary for EU accession. However, the internalization of new democratic norms proved to be more complicated than the unidirectional transmission expected by many elites, as students, parents, and politicians played a part in the way that educational reforms were understood, implemented, embodied, and even resisted. Although tolerance education was initially included in Lithuanian reforms with little fanfare, there has been an increasingly visible backlash against it, as some now see its existence as an encroachment on the right of “Lithuanians” to develop a strong national identity after 60 years of occupation. By analyzing key educational policies in Lithuania, as well as international barometers for social tolerance, this chapter finds that the embrace of intolerance by many individuals and elites in Lithuania is not just a proclivity for prejudice, but a tool for challenging the boundaries of EU expectations to define the values and norms of an independent nation-state.