The usage of competitions in tourism education

by Katarzyna Lesniewska & Tomasz Napierala, University of Lodz

Presented at The t-FORUM 2015 Global Conference. Tourism Intelligence in Action, Naples, Italy, 4-7 May 2015

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Abstract

The aim of the presentation is to discuss significance of competitions in tourism higher education. First, the author discuss the idea of a contest as an educational tool. It must be emphasized that, in many disciplines usage of competitions as an educational tool is popular and widely recognized, especially music education (Austin, 1990) and ITC education (Dagiene & Skupiene, 2004; Dagiene, 2010). On the other hand, increasing of students activity is the most significant aspect of recent process of developing educational tools (Paraskeva, Mysirlaki & Papagianni, 2010). The author’s thesis is that contests can be used as an very effective and up-to-date educational tool in tourism, with respect to changes and challenges of modern tourism industry.

The study based on findings from the evaluation of the project ‘SCHEDULE. Significance of competitions in higher education’, conducted by the authors. The core of the project is the 24HOURS competition held in Lodz (Poland), in November 2014. The main idea of the 24HOURS competition is to solve the particular problem of the MICE tourism in the city of Lodz. Two research techniques were used for the evaluation of the competition: questionnaires with all participants, and in-depth interviews with the winners. Results of the study can be implemented by tourism educators, interested in developing modern educational tools.

Keywords

Competition; Modern educational tool; Tourism higher education

Literature

  • Austin J.R., 1990, Competition is music education the loser?, Music Educators Journal, 76(6), 21–25.
  • Dagiene V., Skupiene J., 2004, Learning by competitions: olympiads in informatics as a tool for training high-grade skills in programming, In: 2nd International Conference on Information Technology. Research and Education, IEEE, 79–83.
  • Dagiene V., 2010, Sustaining informatics education by contests, In: Teaching fundamentals concepts of informatics, Eds. J. Hromkovic, R. Kralovic, J. Vahrenhold, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, 1–12.
  • Paraskeva F., Mysirlaki S., Papagianni A., 2010, Multiplayer online games as educational tools. Facing new challenges in learning, Computers & Education 54(2010), 498–505.