Teaching tourism change agents

Abstract

This article discusses knowledge, competencies and skills Master’s students should obtain during their academic studies and particularly, the differences between teaching about a topic and teaching to do. This is exemplified by experiential learning theory and the case of a change management course that is part of a Tourism Master’s program, where a major challenge is not only to teach students about change and change agents, but to teach them how change feels and how to become change agents. The change management course contains an experiment inspired by experiential teaching literature and methods. The experiment seeks to make students not only hear/learn about change agency and management, but to make them feel change, hereby enabling them to develop the skills and competencies necessary for them to take on the role as change agents and thus enable them to play key roles in implementing change in tourism in the future.