Unlocking industry insights: enhancing education through incorporating industry interviews in assessments

Abstract

Integrated industry engagement has become a vital aspect of higher education, particularly ensuring curricular relevance in postgraduate programmes. This is especially significant in the complex field of Tourism and Hospitality (T&H), where equipping students with both hard and soft skills is essential for navigating the evolving workplace. Informed by Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), this paper examines the enhancement of tourism education in two postgraduate T&H courses. These courses incorporated interviews with key industry figures as part of their assessments. Employing duoethnography, the research involved analyzing the reflections of two T&H educators, along with a review of assessment outcomes and course evaluations. The findings reveal that incorporating industry interviews enriches classroom discussions and bridges the gap between theory and practice. Furthermore, this approach fosters technological proficiency and improves the overall quality of students’ assessments, resulting in a more practical and insightful learning experience within T&H courses.