Chapter 7: COVID-19: An Opportunity to Theorise (Online) Teaching Practices in Tourism and Related Topics

COVID-19 impacted the tourism sector, and its ripple effect is equally evident in tourism academia at all levels. Since innovation in tourism pedagogy is considered an epicentre of quality education, this study proposes an integrated model to identify the degree of pedagogical innovation adapted by tourism educators. The model is an amalgamation of innovation indicators in teaching practices developed by Sigala (2021), a futurist model developed by Wassler and Fan (2021) and a model of innovation developed by Brooker and Joppe (2014).

The study is exploratory, and an online qualitative survey was used to collect data. Data were analysed using the Nvivo 12 software and three themes were drawn: Painters, Artists and Artisans.

The study found that the majority of the tourism educators are painters as they adopted minor changes in their pedagogy. They follow the conventional methods of teaching by incorporating ICT into their pedagogy. Whereas a smaller group of tourism educators introduced innovative tools to encourage and equip students with professional skills (artists/artisans).

The study suggests practical implications for tourism educators to embrace and innovate their pedagogy to become ‘artists/artisans’. The support of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and industry professionals are equally crucial for bringing innovation in tourism pedagogy and academia, in general, artisans.

Given that tourism education has scantly been discussed following the breakout of COVID-19 (Sigala, 2020), the study addresses that resurrection of tourism pedagogy through an integrated model.