eLearning in tourism and hospitality is one of the recent research lines of webatelier.net, research and development lab of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) Lugano, Switzerland.
Research projects are staying in the overlapping area between eLearning and eTourism, approaching it from the viewpoints of academic research and hospitality and tourism industry consultancy, including development and testing activities.
Among several activities within this research line, we would like to mention:
- Expert review and benchmarking of all existing online training courses about tourism destinations, provided by National Tourism Offices on evaluation of their content, functionalities and methods used.
- Extensive case studies with National Destination Management Organizations on the evaluation of management practices of destinational eLearning courses design, development and implementation.
- Evaluation through phone interviews of motivations travel agents in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and India have on undertaking a training activity about tourism destination online.
- Research on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and specifically on MOOCs in tourism field.
- Research on technology enhanced life-long learning, formal and informal learning and gamification in the tourism field.
- Design, development and promotion of online training courses in the hospitality and tourism field.
- Journal special issues and dedicated workshops.