Abstract:Inviting industry professionals as speakers in university classrooms for the benefit of future managers is essential to an applied field of higher learning. This study examines the role of "Professor-for-a-Day" in nurturing communities of learning and practice in hospitality and tourism programs at universities. Data were collected (auto-) ethnographically over five years (2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017) in Hong Kong, through in-depth interviews with guest speakers from the industry, subject lecturers who … Show more
“…Workplace technology application should be enhanced across the curriculum in tourism programs to prepare students for a career and meet organizations’ and customers’ needs [ 88 ]. For vocational orientation programs, voices from industry practitioners carry equal, or sometimes stronger, credibility than those from academia [ 89 , 90 ]. Guest speakers from the industry could be invited to share their real-world experience and insight about industry prospects.…”
Hong Kong hospitality and tourism industry has been battered by the triple whammy of social unrest, Sino-US trade war and COVID-19 pandemic in recent years. To understand how vulnerable tourism students may be in terms of career shock when facing the three major challenges, 407 tourism students in Hong Kong were surveyed. Structural equation modelling found a positive correlation between affect (an intrinsic, motivating factor) and extraneous events (an extrinsic, demotivating factor), indicating that motivation and demotivating factors may co-exist. Affect was more positively correlated with three career choice outcomes (intent to join the industry, desire for a lifelong career, and resilience in face of unfavourable circumstances) than was Extraneous. In face of career shock arising from extraneous events, tourism students still tend to have a strong intent to join the workforce, take it as a lifelong career, and remain resilient despite the hardship. However, the career shock was a greater concern for those in hotel-related disciplines and for students aged over 20 than younger ones. The findings offer an empirical basis to guide policy makers, academia and the industry in strategy formulation to ensure sustainable quality and manpower supply in the post-crisis future.
“…Workplace technology application should be enhanced across the curriculum in tourism programs to prepare students for a career and meet organizations’ and customers’ needs [ 88 ]. For vocational orientation programs, voices from industry practitioners carry equal, or sometimes stronger, credibility than those from academia [ 89 , 90 ]. Guest speakers from the industry could be invited to share their real-world experience and insight about industry prospects.…”
Hong Kong hospitality and tourism industry has been battered by the triple whammy of social unrest, Sino-US trade war and COVID-19 pandemic in recent years. To understand how vulnerable tourism students may be in terms of career shock when facing the three major challenges, 407 tourism students in Hong Kong were surveyed. Structural equation modelling found a positive correlation between affect (an intrinsic, motivating factor) and extraneous events (an extrinsic, demotivating factor), indicating that motivation and demotivating factors may co-exist. Affect was more positively correlated with three career choice outcomes (intent to join the industry, desire for a lifelong career, and resilience in face of unfavourable circumstances) than was Extraneous. In face of career shock arising from extraneous events, tourism students still tend to have a strong intent to join the workforce, take it as a lifelong career, and remain resilient despite the hardship. However, the career shock was a greater concern for those in hotel-related disciplines and for students aged over 20 than younger ones. The findings offer an empirical basis to guide policy makers, academia and the industry in strategy formulation to ensure sustainable quality and manpower supply in the post-crisis future.
“…Then, by extension, it can be argued then that these assessments may not necessarily have to rest within the confines of the classroom (physical or virtual) but could instead be nested with practitioners who possess the necessary skillsets. Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, some institutions have appointed adjunct lecturers or guest professors to complement their teaching staff in specialty areas such as culinary or wine studies (Hui, 2016;Xiao et al, 2018). These opportunities widen students' learning and applied skills by exposing them to different ways of acquiring valuable skillsets for graduate employability.…”
Section: "Our School Provides All the Required Applications And Tools...mentioning
This research presents a reframing of tourism and hospitality teaching and assessment quality assurance in a post-COVID-19 higher education landscape. It does this as a timely and opportune moment to reflect on why and how higher education assessments should be framed through a Blue Ocean Strategy for disciplines such as tourism and hospitality to formulate radical changes in an environment that has long been dominated by using examinations to assess learning. To explore potential solutions, this research traces the journeys of 16 Chinese academics transitioning as educators before and during the outbreak of COVID-19. The findings revealed how the pandemic hastened the replication of face-to-face teaching and assessments into an online mode. However, other essential skills, such as graduate employability, remain implicit as the influences on students’ competencies for the post-pandemic industry needs more exploration. Derived from these outcomes is a conceptual framework around a Blue Ocean Strategy to repurpose the role of assessments to prompt broader conversations and debates about the theory and practice of tourism and hospitality assessments towards desired futures.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.