Educational Technology Research in the Hospitality Industry

Abstract

This article is the second of two papers that focus on instructional systems and educational technology assessment in the hospitality industry. Similar to the first paper, the purpose of this article is twofold: 1) to expand the readers' knowledge about what has been done by academicians in hospitality education to evaluate the effectiveness of technology-enhanced instructional systems in hospitality education, and 2) to suggest future research needed to advance the ability of hospitality educators to assess the effectiveness of technology-enhanced instructional systems. The authors define terminology and discuss assessment and evaluation methods that have been used in hospitality education and documented in academic journals. Empirical articles are critically evaluated as to their contribution to the theory of educational technologies and any methodological shortcomings are identified. Findings suggest that there are major gaps in the assessment components of these articles, including: no landmark studies were found that developed generalizable rubrics of assessment; very little of the research was built upon previous assessment techniques; many researchers asked opinions about instruction as a method of determining its educational value; and the small sample sizes and/or the exclusive use of basic descriptive statistics limited generalizability. Also included is a discussion centered on various suggestions future researchers should consider when assessing the effectiveness of various technology-enhanced instructional systems.