How can we contribute to a better knowledge about accessible tourism by the ones that present the future of the tourism industry?
Within the project Tour4All – development of curricula on accessible tourism courses, who’s objective is to develop educational resources for educational institutions and centres to increase the knowledge of accessible tourism, an online module has been developed. This module has been tested with a selected group of 22 students on the quality, user-friendliness and effectiveness of the developed module, resources and platform.
The piloting took place at the Paolo Borsellino – tourism high school, in Palermo, from the beginning of April to the first week of May. Two classes were involved in the piloting with a total of 22 students, all from the direction “tourism”. The pilot was organized as an informative course within the “alternanza scuola-lavoro” programme which showed the interest and recognized relevance from the school management in a course on accessible tourism.
The piloting consisted of 5 meetings, spread over 4 weeks, and 50 hours of online course that the students did on their own or with teachers from the school. During the face-to-face meetings, the teachers and CSC worked together to receive feedback on the work done by the students at home, as well as to discuss the most important topics by using different teaching methods such as informal activities of role-play, discussions and educational games.
The reaction of the students, both personal and through their given feedback on the different modules was very good. The units they liked most were the ones with more practical examples, however none of the units was rated as negative. The platform still needs some improvement according to teachers and students, but also here the overall feedback was rather positive. The relevance of the course was clearly acknowledged by all participants.
The same piloting testing was executed in two other partner-countries: Germany and Portugal. Also in those countries, the piloting was done in a school with students ranging from 15 to 19. In Portugal the online course was received very well by both the teachers and the participants, however, since the students were a bit younger, the language and topics might have been a bit challenging at times. In Germany the students experienced some difficulties with the online platform and also the teachers gave as points of improvement to have a more local approach for the face-to-face sessions which could be good for the attention of the students. However, all in all, the module showed it success, quality and relevance and thus is valuable addition to the educational offer in the tourism sector.
In the last month of the project the partners will use the comments and feedback of the piloting participants to finalize the module and present it to the wider public, during the final conference in Brussels on the 6th of September.
For more information about the final conference, including video’s with speakers, look here: efvet.org.
The projects results will be also presented at a local level, the 13th of September in Palermo.
Tour4All is financed by Erasmus+ Programme – Key Action 2: Strategic Partnership|VET.
The project is enriched by the collaboration of a diverse partnership composed by 9 partners:
- CEPROF – Centros Escolares de Ensino Profissional, Lda(Portugal, coordinator);
- INOVA+ Servicos De Consultadoria Em Inovacao Tecnologica S.A.(Portugal);
- IHK – Projektgesellschaft GmbH(Germany);
- European Forum of Technical and Vocational Education and Training – EfVET(Belgium);
- Fondazione M.E.T.A Musei Eventi Turismo Alghero(Italy);
- Stage Within European Programmes, S.L.(Spain);
- Ovar Forma – Ensino e Formação Lda(Portugal);
- The Lithuanian Association of People with Disabilities(Lithuania);
- Centro Per Lo Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci (Italy).
For further information, please contact Vidjaya Thelen, vidjaya.thelen@danilodolci.org.