Significant and rapid changes in the world's climate, technology and geopolitics has created a new environment for the tourism industry, and for those that rely on it for their livelihoods. These changes create a demand for globally competent, culturally sensitive and technologically skilled workforce, to support sustainable tourism development on a local, regional and global scale. Educational institutions worldwide strive to provide such skills and competencies to their students, but the high cost of participating in international exchange programmes limits opportunities for inclusive, intercultural, cross-border collaboration. To meet the challenge, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) pedagogy was pioneered by the SUNY COIL Centre, where groups of students from two or more institutions, from different countries and/or cultures, work on sustained and assessed projects or assignments, developed collaboratively by tutors from the partner institutions. The collaborative work takes place online, using freely available and commonly used technology. This study aims to explore how the application of technology through COIL can help in shaping the tourism workforce of the future, particularly in the Northern and the Arctic regions. The study reviews the key literature on the COIL pedagogy and discusses two case studies of recent COIL projects, on the subjects of "Interpretation as a Management Tool in Marine Wildlife Tourism" and "How Tourism Can Contribute to Achieving SDG14: Life Below Water". Written reflective accounts of students, who participated in these COIL projects, were used as empirical evidence of the benefits COIL can bring to tourism education, as well as challenges such approach can pose. These accounts were subjected to inductive qualitative thematic analysis, to identify and analyse recurring themes. These themes, project examples and COIL pedagogy are then discussed in relation to the sustainable tourism development paradigm, to showcase the importance of this pedagogy for the future of tourism.
Citation
HARBERT, S. and ROITERSHTEIN, A. 2024. Virtual exchange (COIL): shaping the tourism workforce of the future. Presented at the 32nd Nordic symposium on tourism and hospitality research, 18-20 September 2024, Stavanger, Norway.
Presentation Conference Type
Presentation / Talk
Conference Name
32nd Nordic symposium on tourism and hospitality research
The abstract for this presentation has been included in the edited book of abstracts with the following citation: HARBERT, S. and ROITERSHTEIN, A. 2024. Virtual exchange (COIL): shaping the tourism workforce of the future. In Moya, A.T., Furunes, T. and Kvalsvik, L.K. (eds.) Abstracts from the 32nd Nordic symposium on tourism and hospitality research, 18-20 September 2024, Stavanger, Norway. Stavanger: University of Stavanger [online], pages 78-79. Available from: https://www.uis.no/nb/node/10138
