Applied Travel and Tourism Programme

Showing students

2009-02-17T13:48:00.004+13:00

Its been a while but here I am again. Today I am showing year two students this blog and the numerous other ones I run. We have 12 students completing the second year of the diploma this year. The first course for students is Sales and Marketing followed by Sustainable Practice.

Its interesting to note that none of the students in class have a blog - amazing really.

Progress Update

2008-05-27T10:18:00.002+12:00

http://flickr.com/photos/blumpy/325853852/

This is an update of the progress we are making on the development of the Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism.

Tour Guiding – completion of new integrated assessment for pre-moderation with ATTTO. Small amount of work on local course – Natural Flora and Fauna. Reworking of lesson flow. Ready for delivery next semester.

Adventure Tourism – design of assessment for pre-moderation by ATTTO. Development of teaching resources (build on from Tour Guiding already well planned). Plan for 10 day taster in Wanaka. Ready for delivery next semester.

These two specialties are top priority with the return of the tour guiding specialist this week. It is expected all work will be completed by end of August.

Travel Operations – After reflection on this specialty updating and refinement of teaching delivery and assessment will be carried out next semester.

Research Work Based Specialty - liaising with BAM/CEP project coordinator to work a combined approach and development of teaching resources under way and assessment design and pre-moderation. Ready for delivery next semester.

Reception Services
Ninety percent developed – needs reflection and minor changes – being delivered now.

Tourism Enterprises
This specialty is being delivered now – it will however be redeveloped to cater for market requirements. Teaching resources are being gathered to facilitate full blended learning.

All of the above will be completed by the end of the year

Future Plans
Tourism Sustainability
Funds for development of this in early 2009 are being sought from the September Innovation Fund Grant. Gathering of teaching resources already started. Design of course outline will be ready to go to Academic Board before end of year.

One further specialty is planned for development in 2009.
(This is will facilitate the offering of different specialties and student choice year to year).

Update

2008-03-04T13:47:00.009+13:00

Progress is continuing on development of teaching resources for the Reception services and Tourism Enterprises specialties. This is proving to be time-consuming for the selling component as resources are not obviously available in the travel and tourism areas and need to be hunted out.Blogging for both these specialties is proving to be a bonus for students as they are able to pick up activities and resources from the blog especially if they miss class. However the ongoing problems we have been encountering with internet access - internet provider problems, is proving to be annoying - however have conteracted this by having a backup plan. Again this is a problem often encountered in the workplace no matter what industry you are in. It also highlights our reliability on internet access. Try looking at one of our blogs reception services blog .

Our blogging classes have temporarily been put on hold just until teaching has settled down. We will then go back to once weekly time slots. Teachers are however writing posts on the course blogs which is working really well.

I have also started working on the paper to be presented at the 5th Pan Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning in London in July. Susan Ellis from EDC is helping with the process which is proving to be complex but really interesting - hope those at the conference think so to.

Happy New Year - Update

2008-01-31T15:35:00.000+13:00

This year has started as a busy one and looks as though it will continue that way. We will be delivering the first year of the second year of the programme - which is exciting. There are four new lecturers involved and I am sure the students will benefit from the greater input.

Along with EDC we have been hosting some blogging classes. Good opportunity to offer some training and help continue to build on our skill base. Those of us involved have started our own personal blogs in an effort to practise all of the things we would like to replicate on the course blogs. So let me update you:

Each our our six specialties on the programme will run with a blog - this is a way for us to keep students relevant with the latest happenings in tourism, communicate with students and link activities from the course blogs to wiki educator. Students will also be given the opportunity to post comments on the blog - we will be trialing this with second year students.

Take a look at Rachel's blog . We have also been looking at bloglines.

The best news however has been the acceptance of my proposal to present a paper to the Fifth Pan Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning in London, July 13-17. Working on getting the funds together for this??? The paper will be on "Open Education and Training in the Travel and Tourism Industry" have a look at the wiki if you want to read the full proposal.

Blog to Blog

2007-12-14T16:43:00.000+13:00

The travel and tourism team - Kevin, Lynn and I have been busy perfecting our blogging techniques this week - hopefully all knowledge gained will not be lost over the holiday period.

Leigh has posted the outcome (and more) of our discussion/meeting earlier this week follow the link http://learnonline.wordpress.com/ .Thanks Leigh, the objectives are clear and I will be working throughout January bearing in mind you will be away for February.

Susan (EDC) and I were discussing putting together a proposal for a research paper on blogging, wiki's and how we are resourcing them and what will be involved in continued technical and resourcing support once the initial development is completed in 2008. We can start gathering research material now especially since staff have started training on part of the technical requirements eg. blogs. Could even develop into a text wiki or book.

This will probably be my last post until after Christmas. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Thanks for all the work this year Leigh and I look forward to working with you, Sunshine, Susan and the team in 2008.

Blog sessions, Conferences and Goodbye

2007-12-05T15:13:00.001+13:00

Thought this photo was appropriate for some of our team who are presently undertaking blog training. Kevin, Lynn, Rachel and I are being lead down the fast flowing waters of blogdom to the treasure of understanding.

Actually we have all created our own blog in an effort to better
understand the medium before using our course blogs in 2008. I am mightly impressed and hope this new found skill is not lost over the christmas break.

Otherwise we are continuing to develop and have put in a proposal to the PCF5 Conference (London, July 08) and awaiting confirmation that this 3oo word abstract has been accepted. The proposal is on the wiki if you want to read it http://wikieducator.org/Travel_and_Tourism

Sadly we will be losing one of our team. We wish her all the best for her future. Thank you.

What do you think?

2007-11-27T13:55:00.000+13:00

What do you think of our Bed and Breakfast model? As part of an assessment project Ciploma in International Tourism students completed this year "The Bent Trees" model was a highlight. We shall be putting it on the Wiki under Tourism Enterprises (under the new Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism) as this aspect of the project will form part of the new assessment along with the other tourism business areas: marketing, financial control, operations management information and systems and human resources.

One of the comments from the last posting came from Wayne at Wikieducator who has asked if I can elaborate a bit more on our "good news" so that he can put a sentence or two on the wikieducatior newsletter. Here goes.....

The Otago Polytechnic (New Zealand) Diploma of Applied Travel and Tourism development on wikieducator has been granted further funds and salaried support for work in 2008. The orgainsation funding is the second instalement for the project which began in 2007 and continued connfirmation of the commitment management have to progressing this innovative and unique product on wikieducator, according to Programme Manager Hillary Jenkins.

Our first group of students have finished for the year and while a few are graduating a good portion are returning for the second year of the diploma in 2008. Staff will be spending the next few weeks revising the programme which run this year making improvements and updates.

Good News!!

2007-11-22T10:06:00.000+13:00

Good news day - this development has been allocated from OP CAPEX funding a realistic time allocation for curriculum development and a top up for our budget. The monies will be used mainly in the area of graphic design and EDC (Leigh's time) and possibly training for staff on using wikieducator and web logs.

Nicky (tour guide) and I are also meeting with Andy Thompson from the Adventure School to look at our course plans for Adventure tourism and any role they may play in supporting it or even if some of their student may like to enrol on it as a specialty area.

Blogs

2007-11-21T11:33:00.000+13:00

At our regular meeting - now moved to a Wednesday, Leigh and I discussed the framework for setting web logs eg. do we have a blog for every speciality or do we just have one? After some discussion we decided on using the option to have a blog for each specialty. This would provide the lecturer (delivery the speciatly) with the opportunity to personalise the blog, keep it updated with the latest industry trends, news and generally take ownership of it. The emphasis being not so much on who is teaching the specialty but the subject.

Leigh has set up conferenceandevents.edublogs.org/# tourguiding.edublogs.org/# traveloperations.edublogs.org/# cookislandstourism.edublogs.org/# sustainabletourism.edublogs.org/# tourismenterprises.edublogs.org/# adventuretourism.edublogs.org/# wholesaletouroperations.edublogs.org/# receptionservices.edublogs.org/
These are still in the developing phase, we have a designer who will create the graphic design of the blog and also will work with our powerpoints to standardise them.

We also discussed training needs for staff early in the new year. EDC can offer the service however we would have to look at funding for this so will investigate with Head of School. Training should occur in the first few weeks after staff return from the christmas leave. On going training will occur through EDC.

Leigh can you continue on any outstanding jobs and provide some sort of timetable for design. Thanks.

What next!

2007-11-08T15:05:00.000+13:00

Missed the usual meeting with Leigh, he was in Queenstown so am just going to update and then provide him with some jobs to complete before the next time we meet.

I am trying to work through the front page of the wiki and update and add resources, activities etc. Need to get this completed and then we can use it as a template. In the meantime am also working on the other specialties. Had a meeting with William Lucas from Languages today trying to work out some way in which we can collaborate on the Reception Services specialty(L4). There is a local course for greetings, customs etc those working in the tourism industry should be aware of. This could work out really well in that William says his students need to have practical experience in english conversational skills. Could see this working well with ours in that it would provide them with experience of trying to listen and gain information from people whose first language is not english. Also would like to use the language students as a resource from which to build activities around. We are both going to think about what we could do and then meet again to put in place a plan.

We have had our first input of information into the wiki on the Cook Island Tourism specialty - this is great. So have opened put out a notice on googlegroups and Wikipasifica to see if anyone else is interested in developing this with us. Will keep you posted. Terry Marler is off to Samoa on Saturday and is trying to set up a tourism contact person in the educational field for us. I have to come up with a wish list for him. Wish I was going too!

Have entered the tour guiding wiki into the OP Staff Innovation Awards. Want to increase the profile of the programme so thought it was good to start from the inside and work outwards. Have been working with marketing to improve our profile on the website and design a new flyer and graduate profile. Its not curriculum development though is it?

Met with Terry Neal today to complete an evaluation which will be feed back to TEC amongst others. She looked at the work on wikieducator and asked lots of questions about the development, student feedback and support surrounding it. It was good to talk about the project and she was very positive.

Have to go so shall make another entry soon with a work list.

To Do List

2007-10-25T12:00:00.000+13:00

At our regular weekly meetings Leigh suggested I put his to do list up on the blog. Partly so that he would be prompted to complete it and secondly it provides those of you reading it with some idea of what we do at our meetings.

Update budget and rename the file to Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism
Update wiki in line with horticulture or should I say horticultures has been designed in line with the tour guiding wiki
Change the tour guiding blog name from Tourism 1 to Tour Guiding
Go through all new course pages and set up
ICT - using of a compass activity

Hillary

put link from Tour Guiding (Admin) to this blog
continue with Wikipacifica tutorials - on using a wiki
start to look at putting core skills on wiki
start developing sales unit for Reception Services
start Tourism Enterprises - putting content on wiki - designing assessments, activities

Leigh and I also discussed the ongoing resourcing that this programme will require even when development is completed. This would include:

ICT teacher training
updating wiki and blog
wiki management

Its been a while

2007-10-11T13:44:00.000+13:00

A photo from our recent fieldtrip to Queenstown and Fiordland. It was extemely cold on the two boats we had and great fun. One of our students is going back for work experience!

AJ Hackett's bungy jumping operation put on a tour for us and three students took the plunge.

Yes it has however I had done this post as draft in September but when I went back to it couldn't figure out how to post it. So I have rewritten it.

We have finished delivering tour guiding and are now working on assessment activities, marking guides and evidence and judgement statements to be sent to ATTTO (our training provider) for pre-moderation.

All of the activities for tour guiding have been designed by us andthis has been a substantial piece of work. The small amount of material which came with this programme when we purchased it was either incomplete or required further work to bring it to a level we felt happy delivering. There was also the problem with not being able to put any of the acquired material on the wiki. Whereas all our activities (OP) go on the wiki as resource for the blog.

We also realised the tour guiding outline within our programme document also needed to be changed to reflect our local area, industry and the unique flora, fauna and landscape we have in the South Island.

There changes along with three new course outlines will be going for academic approval as a category B change. The specialties: Reception Services, Tourism Enterprise and Adventure Tourism still require the development of teaching resources. Two of these will be completed by the end of the year and the third will be held over until 2008 and be developed along with two other specialties Conference and Events and Sustainable Tourism.

We have also been working to improve our content with regards to local iwi and treaty content. I have had successful discussions with Kate Timms and Willie Campbell and we will be looking to add content in year one and two of the diploma.

I hope to get the team to look at the core skills section at the end of the teaching year. This course requires some additions, editing and review before delivery in 2008. When it will be revamped to meet the requirements of ATTTO who have changed the national qualification linked to it and the unit standards that form it. This will be part of the curriculum development identified for 2008.

2007-10-11T13:36:00.001+13:00

Update

2007-07-28T17:17:00.000+12:00

The picuture below: http://flickr.com/photos/carreon/462155740/

"Dozens of tourists at one of the Cristo Redentor balconies. Many of them will open their arms as the Christ on the top of the mountain does, but this guy took a bit more risk standing on top of the handrail of the balcony. The Sugar Loaf and the Guanabara bay are in the background. Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. "

Developing new programmes can at times be like this.

The last two weeks have been busy ones not just for me but for the teaching team of Nicky and Kevin. This has included videoing some roleplays, carrying out some great map referencing work. Taking students on a guided tour of the university and getting students to comment on Kevin's leadership and guiding skills. They also went on a city tour (bus trip) much to the delight of the tour operator as according to him things have been pretty slow during the cold weather.

Activities using the internet have been placed on the course blog http://www.blogger.com/www.tourism1.wordpress.com and in an effort not to confuse students Nicky and Leigh made a democratic decision to post activities daily rather than weekly. A good decision (just as well I am not an autocratic leader) and not as time consuming as it sounds because you can post activities to the blog and let them sit there as drafts (unpublished) than its just a matter of publishing them. What is time consuming and I still don't think I have got it right, is putting the url address with the photo in the correct format. Will go back and look how its done in other activities.

The blog seems to have been a success with students and something they have had not problem in using. It has been useful for students who may have missed a session - they can catch up from home. We will have to remind students about referencing and there is of course the possibility that someone else could be doing the work.

Nicky has been doing a great job and has fitted into the team wonderfully. Kevin has been assisting Nicky with some of the equipment we use in the classroom eg. projector and overhead transperences and I think Nicky has been recipricating by explaining what is going on in the blog to Kevin. We will at some stage soon have a team session looking at the wiki and the blog. All of us had a look at the ICT activity Leigh designed and explained (at a very fast rate) in class. We got to have a look at google maps, and community work. Most students caught on really quickly, lecturers a little slower but I am mindful that there may be students who will be finding this quite challenging. Each activitity however has support material which often includes tutorials to assist with this.

The students at present are working at the Mellor Restaurant completing two unit standards. It may be good to change this for next year so that they are looking at doing food safety and first aid rather than the present units.

This coming week Nicky, Kevin and I will finish the development of the course and have designed a new assessment ready to go to ATTTO for premoderation. Lynn (another team member) has began an audit of the travel material for EIT. I have been in contact with TANZ to see what is required if we would like to put some of this material on the wiki. We really have enough of own material in travel to redevelop and use so this may not be an issue. We will also be using a newly designed electronic version of all the booking forms used by travel agents which is great, this has come from our association with TANZ.

Wiki, blog, blog, wiki, wiki, wiki, blog

2007-07-17T11:42:00.000+12:00

Why the sign you may ask. Well its a bit like my working life at the moment. One way to this blog the other way to another blog and don't forget the wiki. At least I have a reasonable excuse for appearing confused and behind it all I have this aussie accented voice buzzing around in my head saying "update the blog, update the blog".

Actually its not that bad at all - as you will read. I will start at the end of my story and finish at the start - told you I was confused.

The Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism has its own tourguiding wiki and course blog. The link to which you will find on the right.

Leigh, Nicky (who I will explain about soon) and I have been working intensley to have the blog up and running for students who started the new semester yesterday. They the students seem to really like it which is great and seem to be working from it easily. Just how common our students were with blogs however was suprising with 1 out of 20 saying they knew what one was.

Now its about upkeep, update and building on the resources and activities we have put together on the wiki. I got to utalise the advantages of a wiki when creating resources and activites for our one by downloading resources we can easily use from another. I have also created a generic "leadership styles" slideshow for general upload by other users of slideshare. I then used this as a basis for a tourism orientated one.

Nicky Snoyink is our new tour guiding lecturer and I am sure she must have wondered what she was getting into when she started teaching yesterday. Nicky comes from a background in tourism - as an operating tour guide (Managing Director) of her own company which runs guided walking tours in the lower south island for USA clients. This is the down season for such activities so the teaching position just worked out nicely.

We are running the specialty course four days a week - classroom sessions 8.30am - 10.30am and computing facilitation sessions 11am - 1pm. This is intermingled with activities of an applied nature eg. guided walk through university today - observing Kevin's (our other tour guiding lecturer) leadership skills and a one hour city sights bus tour tomorrow. All things which are vital to the practical understanding of the theory students learn.

Off to do some more development work but will be checking in before the end of the week again.

What's on tomorrow

2007-07-09T22:14:00.000+12:00

Right - finish leadership and visitor interpretation - health and safety can be completed next week. Update the course blog, check what we have done and I then need to familiarise myself with the wiki to the stage where I can show Nicky how to use it.

Timetable

2007-07-09T10:40:00.000+12:00

I have set a timetable for this week (rather than deadline) for Leigh and I to work to so that Nicky (new lecturer) can begin teaching next week - July 16 and ends August 31. The learning objectives will be reinforced by our fieldtrip to Queenstown and Milford Sound on September 10.

Monday: Work towards completing teaching resources. The order of teaching will dictate this; leadership skills, interpretation plans, health and safety, tour guiding skills. Hospitality are teaching food service and non-alcholic beverages and driving theory is to be contracted out. The assessment has some arrangements to be made around it otherwise it is completed. With tour guiding skills we will have to purchase some maps, get a class set of headphones and compasses and some two way transmitters from within the polytechnic.

Sunshine (designer) has been completing some work for us and Leigh has two assisgnments - compass exercise and leadership pictorial.

Tuesday: Work towards completing teaching resources and updating the course blog (not this one). Links will be created in the blog which will lead students to the wiki - learning activities.

Wednesday (morning): complete all of the above so that Nicky can deliver it.

No pressure.

Progress

2007-06-28T12:58:00.000+12:00

The wiki is progressing as are our teaching resources. We have employed a new tour guiding lecturer - Nicky Snoyink. Nicky has a strong practical background in tour guiding and is a managing director of her own company "Travel Logistics". Maybe you would like to put in a posting about yourself Nicky?

I have set up another blog (Wordpress) to run alongside our tour guiding specialty which begins next semester. In the first instance it will be used so that lecturer's can get used to writing, editing and updating a blog and also for students who have missed a class and want to know where to find resources. You might say it will be operating in the same way as the announcement board in Blackboard.

Leigh and I are meeting weekly for 3hrs. This has worked well for me especially when it comes to using the wiki, getting ideas from him and letting him see the administration work that goes behind developing and running a programme simultaneously.

Resources

2007-06-20T14:08:00.000+12:00

Am gathering resources for the Tour Guide specialty. One of our team members, Kevin Flaherty alerted me to a new article on Campbell Live, looking at tourism impacts, carbon credits etc. So have enquired with TV3 as to how we can have access to this video (without having to buy it) Have requested they place it on YouTube so we can use it as a classroom resource. It would be ideal viewing for our Diploma in International Tourism students, initially and then for use in the Diploma for Applied Travel and Tourism. Will wait to hear what feedback we get.

We are in the process of interviewing for a tour guide lecturer. The applicants are of the highest quality and it will be a tough decision. More on that after a successful appointment.

Am in the final stages of working with Karen (our tour guide from Queenstown) who is helping provide us with general information for the industry.

http://www.tv3.co.nz/VideoBrowseAll/CampbellLive/tabid/367/articleID/28774/Default.aspx#video?src=email

Plugging On

2007-06-06T20:11:00.000+12:00

Things have been moving quickly on the development front - with the final section (Tour Guiding) of the programme core beginning this week with new resources in place and team members contributing to these with further resources - great. All work is being placed on a shared folder for easy access.

We are presently seeking a person with recent or present tour guiding experience to teach the tour guiding specialty (elective) which begins next semester. Looks as though there are some good candidates out there.

I am meeting with Dion Hyde from Hospitality tomorrow with the hope of future collaboration between our schools (Applied Business and Hospitality). More dedicated time will now be put to development with the hope that seven of the specialties will be completed by January 2008: tour guiding, travel operations, conference and events, adventure tourism, reception services, flight and cruise and tourism enterprises. This will leave tourism enterprises, wholesale travel, sustainable tourism for development in the first half of 2008 available in the second semester. Its going to be busy.

Wiki mania

2007-05-19T13:27:00.001+12:00

Attended "what is a wiki" course earlier this week, run by Leigh (EDC) and Helen from the Learning Centre. Informative and enlightening - I think I finally get the idea of how things are to be set out for us.

The outline is above and I suppose for me it was actually seeing this in a visual form rather than looking at just the wiki development site(linked to this blog). In summary the only piece of the wiki students will see (unless they want to know the origin of resources, is the activity sheets. These are how students will apply the theory part of the programme and gain a fuller understanding of what they are doing. We will also make this blog available to run beside the activity sheets and use as another learning resource - in that whoever is teaching can provide extra resources and instructions through the blog. Assessment will be carried out separately.

I am also interested in looking at the introduction of Second Life (I am presently working through the tutorial which hopefully will tell me how to embed its URL as a link. http://secondlife.com/ Did it.

From next week on will be able to concentrate fully on the specialist subjects of the programme as am hoping to finish work on the core skills by Wednesday.

2007-05-11T16:19:00.000+12:00

Have been working on the core of the diploma within the tour guiding taster section. Its really interesting as Karen (our tour guide from Queenstown) has provided some great information - so its been all about where to put it under the umbrella of unit standards. She has listed performance criteria eg. Unit 5678 PC 1.2 in some instances which is great but I have been trying to sort which of the information should be retained here in the core or go onto the specialist tour guiding area. Which is why I put this photo of containers at a Tunisia market on this posting.

I have decided (news for Leigh) I would like Leigh to provide the t&t team with a visual presentation of what we have been doing and where we are going, before the end of the semester. I don't think they are reading this blog and it is extremely difficult to get us all together for a regular meeting on development.

I will continue to work on the tour guiding core which has to be completed within two weeks - am starting to look at teaching resources and some lesson plans. The difficulty is finding a good stretch of uninterrupted time where you can really get into it.

Adventurous Development

2007-05-01T20:34:00.000+12:00

A friendly yellow-eyed penguin at Taieri Mouth

Meet today with Leigh (EDU) and Andy Thompson (School of Adventure) to discuss working together to develop electives which would be of benefit to both tourism and adventure.

We discussed the term "Adventure Tourism" and its many definitions. From our point of view I felt it was more to do with providing students with a taster of what was available from tourism operators in NZ eg. mountain biking, kayaking, snow boarding, climbing. This could be combined with some theoretical eco tourism papers.

We also looked at an elective which students from the adventure school would find beneficial. This would probably centre around tourism management papers and be delivered 80% online with block tutorial sessions.

Overall a successful session and one which we will both be able to build on.

Progress

2007-04-26T12:44:00.000+12:00

Yesterday two members of the travel and tourism team,(at out team meeting) Lynn and Sue bought up the possibility of creating an elective which would allow students to complete the external City & Guilds examination attached to our other programme (which we are no running next year). Their thinking behind this was that students would have the opportunity to gain an international qualification. This would be another point of difference for us from other providers and definetly should be looked into. Which we will do.

Leigh, Karen and I are having a skypecast today to discuss our progress.

Wikieducator

2007-04-19T11:08:00.000+12:00

Refer to the wikieducator link to the tour guiding page and below are the five unit standard titles we have included for ease of maintenance and updating, collaboration with other institutions and international networking and Leigh's contribution is to add free and open learning for developing countries.

How visitors learn from interpretation, and evaluate interpretive techniques
Prepare and implement an interpretation plan for tourist attractions, activities and events
Manage health and safety in a tourism context
Demonstrate leadership skills in a tour context
Knowledge of visitor interpretation
Retrieved from "http://wikieducator.org/Tour_Guiding"

New Developer

2007-04-19T11:00:00.000+12:00

I am really excited about taking on a new developer to help with the tour guiding elective in DATT.

Karen Jackson who is presently working as a tour guide in Queenstown has agreed to do some work for us. Just to be able to tap into her past and present practical experience is great. Welcome Karen!

Leigh and I have met with Karen at the polytech and plan to go to Queenstown overnight in the first week of May as a follow up.

New blog

2007-04-19T09:47:00.000+12:00

We have created a new blog and I will migrate all of the information from our previous blog.

Strategic Direction of Travel and Tourism 2007 onwards

2007-03-30T10:35:00.000+12:00

Strategic Direction of Travel and Tourism 2007 onwards

At present the School of Applied Business offers to undergraduate programmes in travel and tourism:
· Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism (Level 5)
· Diploma in International Tourism (Level 5)

In looking at the strategic direction of travel and tourism it was felt that the applied diploma would provide a more comprehensive platform from which to develop new and innovative electives which would assist the programme and school in continuing to deliver a programme which meets the future needs of the industry.

Introduction
The Diploma of International Tourism (DIT) gained project funding of $36,838.00 in 2006 to upgrade its teaching materials and flexible delivery methods. To date $17,142.00 of this has been spent on hardware, staff release time, and a designer.

It is the intention of the project team (John West, Hillary Jenkins, Leigh Blackall) to:
· redirect the remaining funds from the DIT project to the newly acquired Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism (DATT)
· to concentrate on the full and further development of DATT
· to discontinue the Diploma in International Tourism from the end of 2007
· to provide a better integration/advancement of tourism areas between diploma and degree levels in the school

Discussion on the above points has been held beyond the project team with Group Leader, Chris Morland, the Deputy CEO Robin Day and travel and tourism team members.

The following plan has been resolved:
1. The Blackboard shell that has been set up for DITT will become a "shared drive" for the teachers engaged in the face to face teaching. In it will go all the resources that are used to teach DITT. Students will not have access to this shell, it will be used by staff to practice using Blackboard in preparation for development of DATT.

2. As resources are loaded into the DITT shell, anything that can be made relevant for DATT will be identified. Staff will work towards improving the identified resources and making them ready for reformatting by the designer. This role will be undertaken by two staff members currently under project funding and will be finished by June 2007.

3. A new Programme Development Application will be made for funding the development of DATT once it is known how much more money and resources will be needed after spending the remainder of the DITT budget.

4. Development will include – Further development of the Hub. While it is being taught at present, this will have to be realigned as the training provider (ATTTO) has outlined changes to be made in the core skills area (covering this area).

5. Developing resources for the first two existing course outlines (ready for semester 2). Developing two further existing electives (course outline done) and two new electives (course outlines need to be created) plus the research project for teaching in 2008. It is estimated this project would take until June 30, 2008. (Do you think this is long enough – June maybe)

6. A DATT blackboard shell will be created for use in 2008 by students and staff.

7. The Programme Manager will head the project development and arrangements have been made so that most of her teaching duties are covered. That development time will be used to consult with EDC services to further develop the flexible learning curriculum of DATT. Any outside expertise required will be paid from the project budget.

8. A resource audit will be conducted for DATT, using library services to assist in finding reusable learning resources that are in line with the flexible elearning curriculum design devised for DATT.

9. Based on what curriculum activities are devised for DATT and what reusable resources are found, the remainder of the new DATT Development budget will be spent both on staff and resource development

Hillary Jenkins’
Programme Manager
Travel & Tourism
School of Applied Business

Update - DATT workload affecting DIT

2007-02-10T10:19:00.000+13:00

My contribution to the project work has had to take a back seat for the past 5 days or so as responsibilities regarding programme management and the creation of a programme document for our school's new Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism (DATT) have taken priority.

The work for DATT is comprehensive - the document is printed and now awaits approval from Academic Approvals Committee (AAC) next Thursday. I have a meeting with Robyn Hogan from AAC to go over the procedure and any questions which are likely to arise.

I have also started the coordination of development work for this programme which is on a fast track as we start the programme on Feb 12.

Back to the Diploma in International Tourism. It has at times been difficult to know when to stop developing in one area. You keep finding new information and sources during your research that it is so tempting to rework what you have already completed. Trying hard not to do this and also time restraints have stopped this. I have nearly finished my section of the Tourism Industry but need a good run of at, which is hard when I am dealing with other pressing issues. Here is an example of using a template design for powerpoint presentations and publishing it on slideshare (the youtube of powerpoints) . Next week. In the meantime I have started on geography and will work on that this weekend.

I have had to put on hold our intended two day workshop but will have to dedicate next Friday to hopefully catching up with Sunshine (our designer) and Leigh (Educational Development Centre) so that we can go over the Blackboard set up. I have also been keeping an eye on enrollments as our programme has been under strategic and financial review - they are looking viable so that is good. In the meantime back to developing and taking some photos.

Cheers

New digital cameras !!

2007-01-22T10:42:00.000+13:00

New digital cameras arrived yesterday - we will do some training so can make good use of all the features for adding pictures to our information. Three laptops arrived with docking stations - it will take some getting used to not having a desktop screen (at present I am using another persons). I have gone wireless at home with broadband to help with development work.

Developing International Tourism Course

2007-01-14T10:53:00.000+13:00

Hillary and I have decided on the structure of each module of the course. Each section will include lesson plans, a reading and question, a discussion point, multi-choice test (revision only), a powerpoint with teaching resource (notes), and supporting material.

(original post by Lynn)

Day 2

2006-11-28T10:51:00.000+13:00

We were joined by Wendy Ritson-Jones from the library. Today we reviewed what we have done or not done so far.We discussed the use of Wikiversity and some of the consequences of opening up the content of the programmes. We have had some interest in the polytechnic from students from Brazil who wish to join our programmes and gain work experience here. This was an amazing outcome which we are not yet prepared for but wish to be.We then posted some more material for First Line Management on to wikiversity.We don't actually know yet if we can copy this in this way as it is a TANZ resource - we are awaiting a response from TANZ. In the meantime we are putting content outlines - not the actual content