DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION RESHAPING TOURISM EDUCATION: INVESTIGATING THE INFLUENCE OF MOOCS ON TEACHING TOURISM FUNDAMENTALS AND LOCAL LORE

Abstract

With the rapid development of new innovative technologies in the education system, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have begun to appear. It is very important to evaluate the effectiveness of MOOC in teaching the basics of tourism and local lore to students of the educational program in Geography. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching the discipline "Fundamentals of organising and conducting tourism and local lore activities" to students of the Geography educational programme of higher education institutions (universities) in Kazakhstan through MOOC. In the study, the elective subject "Fundamentals of organising and conducting tourism and local lore activities" was taught through MOOC on the Eduardo platform. The study consisted of two phases, with 14 students from the Kazakh National Women's Teacher Training University (KNWTTU) as the control group and 19 students from the Astana International University (AIU) as the experimental group. As a result, at the first stage, KNWTTU and AIU students were approximately at the same level. In the second formative stage, students in the control group remained at the initial level, while students in the experimental group showed a high level. In the first phase, the experimental group scored 10.5% "high", 15.8% "medium" and 73.7% "low"; after MOOC training, 31.6% "high", 47.4% "medium" and 21% "low". Thus, the use of MOOC in the formation of tourism and local lore competence of future geography teachers contributes to the improvement of students' knowledge and understanding of their native land and the formation of tourism and local lore skills.