ABSTRACT

This study examines hospitality management students’ expectations and acquisition of knowledge and skills through the use of a Virtual Field Trip (VFT) platform. In total 135 students in Australia responded to pre- and post- open-ended questionnaires. The pre-questionnaire sought students’ expectations of knowledge and skill acquisition, whereas the post-questionnaire sought their perceptions of actual acquisition of knowledge and skill after engagement with the VFT. The empirical material was thematically analyzed using the textual analysis program Leximancer, facilitating an iterative process moving between codes and participants’ responses. Concept maps were generated thus visualizing thematic relationships. Findings reveal VFT provides a technology-enhanced solution to practice-based knowledge and employability skill acquisition that is successful in supporting assessment tasks and enhancing learning outcomes. Students also reported improvements in their knowledge about the functioning of hotels and an increase in their abilities to operationalize food and beverage systems after using the VFT. Hence, VFT can be an effective technological learning tool for the acquisition of knowledge and skills in hospitality and other fields.

摘要

本研究通过使用虚拟实地考察（VFT）平台，研究了酒店管理专业学生的期望以及对知识和技能的获取。在澳大利亚，共有135名学生对开放式问卷进行了调查。问卷调查前寻求学生对知识和技能习得的期望，而问卷调查后则寻求他们与VFT接触后对知识和技能实际习得的看法。使用文本分析程序Leximancer对主题材料进行了主题分析，从而促进了代码和参与者响应之间的迭代过程。生成了概念图，从而可视化了主题关系。调查结果表明，VFT为基于实践的知识和就业技能获取提供了技术增强的解决方案，该解决方案成功地支持了评估任务并增强了学习成果。学生还报告说，在使用VFT之后，他们对酒店功能的了解有所提高，在餐饮系统上的操作能力也有所提高。因此，VFT可以成为获取酒店及其他领域知识和技能的有效技术学习工具。