Evaluating Online Tourism Education Quality by Using an Instructional Strategy Framework

Abstract

Online education becomes increasingly popular in tourism education. This research is based on a modified instructional strategy framework for online learning environments. The framework integrates behavioral learning theory, cognitive learning theory and social learning theory and proposed seven principles to evaluate the quality of online education. Although the framework is widely applied in an online learning environment, limited research has applied this framework in tourism education. There are three main objectives in the study: (1) to evaluate the learning experience from the student’s perspective; (2) to investigate the instructional strategies from the perspective of teachers; and (3) to compare whether there is any teacher-student discrepancy in the online education experience. This study adopted a mixed-method approach of data collection, which includes semi-structured in-depth interviews with teachers and a survey on the students’ opinion through a questionnaire. The results indicate that feedback is heavily influencing the online course quality from the perspective of students. Meanwhile, teachers tend to consider interaction as a critical factor due to the special requirement of the tourism industry. The findings shed lights on guiding the improvements in online tourism education.