Travel and Tourism Explores New Territory

From the earliest ages of exploration to the contemporary era of global tourism, travelers have been motivated by the desire to leave their comfort zones behind and broaden their horizons.

So it seems appropriate that the Otago Polytechnic’s Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism (Level 5) programme is itself exploring new territory, expanding from a one-year certificate to a two-year diploma, and adopting WikiEducator as a radical new open platform for the delivery of online education.

“What traditionally operates at tertiary institutions is a closed environment where students have to be enrolled in a programme to have access to its information,” explains the school’s programme manager Hilary Jenkins. “By contrast, WikiEducator is open, dynamic and evolving.”

The new platform is a break from the institutional norm in a number of ways, Jenkins says. It is more easily accessed by students, more easily altered and added to by lecturers, and because it is available to non-students, it also acts as a 24/7 marketing tool for the programme itself.

Another exciting new development for the Diploma of Applied Travel and Tourism (Level 5) programme is the introduction of two new short specialty courses for 2009, one of which focuses on small business planning and the other of which is centred around the concept of sustainability.

“The ultimate aim of the programme is to create a nimble framework, so that when things change in the industry, we change with it,” Jenkins says. “We don’t want a programme that remains static for three or four years. We want be able to adapt, even if it’s every year, because that’s a reflection of the industry we’re in.”