As you will see from this assessment handbook, the assignment for this module is related to the production of an educational resource which can be used both for your own knowledge and understanding as well as others. Studying successfully at University is about co-creation and co-production. What this means is that student success at the end of the degree is directly related to the role that you play in forming content and discussion within the modules.
The focus of the content for this assessment is based on an academic / industry term that you are provided with related to sustainability. This will provide the opportunity to show your knowledge and understanding on a specific economic, environmental and sociocultural factors of the term in the context of the contemporary hospitality, events and tourism industry.
Importantly, from your subsequent research, you are also provided with the opportunity to identify what the future holds for the specific term / issue you are focusing on. For our development of a critical discussion, this is looked at from both positive and negative perspectives.
This is how this assessment achieves both the learning outcomes for this module… Using an educational resource that you produce to identify current a term that influences your subject area and industry, and then to determine what will subsequently happen in the future with contemporary sustainability.
This can be quite exciting… As when it comes to your final year of study, you can have the opportunity to look back on your initial foundations of how you thought the industry might change, and see whether the points that you made have started to come to fruition1: Develop a rigorous approach to the acquisition of a broad knowledge base:
This assignment encourages you to contribute towards the development of a broad knowledge base. Your group work, and the subsequent flipped classroom resource that you produce, will be added to the other examples from this year. These can then be potentially used as resources to develop discussion in future, therefore not only developing your own understanding, but others also. The rigorous approach relates to how we acquire the information that we collect on the terminology and phenomena provided. This relates to the collection of academic material, theory, conceptual models, and industry examples which help develop knowledge and understanding to form a varied educational resource.
2: employ a range of specialised skills:
The skills employed for this assessment are potentially incredibly diverse for a level 4 assignment. Due to the nature of creating diverse communication resources for your flipped classroom, you will be exercising your written skills, your verbal skills, how you produce video, as well as how you create content which starts to explore what the viewer has learnt. The variety of software that you potentially use is also a specialised skill that can be employed both to future assignments in other modules, as well as in employment scenarios.
3: evaluate information using it to plan and develop investigative strategies and to determine solutions to a variety of unpredictable problems:
It is important to distinguish between what describing information is, and what evaluating information is. Evaluating information is the next stage after description, as it starts to go into further depth in relation to the impact of what you are discussing, both positively and negatively, and the implications for the industry. This evaluation of the term that you are provided with is fundamentally important for gaining higher grades in your group work.
4: operate in a range of varied and specific contexts taking responsibility for the nature and quality of outputs:
The specific context for this assessment method features in both the production of online material and the educational E-Learning content which needs to be developed. The
development of an online skill set is becoming increasingly important in the service / experience economy, and therefore this mode of assessment provides an opportunity from which to develop a quality output in relation to educational content in the form of understanding terminology. The varied context also applies here in reinforcing the need to educate tourists themselves as to some of the key contemporary issues taking place throughout the world.
