Course Outcomes
To understand sustainable tourism development and contemporary tourism issues from a global community perspective.
This particular outcome sums up this class pretty well for me. Before this semester I would not have been able to explain what sustainable tourism is, or why it is so important in today's society. Having finished this course, I can hardly believe I didn't know more about it in the first place because it is so important!
Our population is growing faster than it ever has, and with it technology. Technology has created affordable travel options for people who in the past would never have imagined going to the places that regular people go all the time now. As a result, tourism has become a gigantic industry, and is still growing. As people travel to more under-developed areas of the world, their carbon footprint has been leaving a mess. This includes things like: the extinction of small cultures, the over-use of resources, unfair trade and general stress on the environment.
In today's society we need to recognize the importance of preserving our fragile world. Now that we have the ability to visit different members of the global community, we need to do so responsibly. This includes things like: understanding the area you are traveling to, knowing the local's concerns and what they ask of their visitors, and being sure that the money you are spending is staying where you spend it, otherwise people and lands are being exploited.
Each student will demonstrate the effective use of technology to improve their writing and speaking. Students will need to demonstrate how they have utilized the online resources to improve their writing skills, incorporate photographs from the Internet, information from electronic journals, and online experts to improve and broaden their perspectives as indicated by the quality of their written and oral communication, and multi-media presentations.
The only way that sustainable tourism can take foot in our world and make a difference is if we all work together as a global community. I believe the best means of this is through education. Writing a blog, and advertising my blog through Pinterest has taught me how effective the internet really is. I have never been inclined to learning the ways of the internet, but slowly I have had to give in as it has become a necessity for finding a job.
I appreciated our early on website evaluations to help me understand how to find a useful source for information. I have always relied on scholarly journals because I was afraid to venture into the web where we all know liars are afoot. It was great to find ways to single out websites with useful information. This really came in handy when searching for information on the Himba since I actually couldn't find too much in the scholarly journals.
It has been wonderful learning how to build a simple, and free, website. I love Weebly.com! Before this class, website building was a daunting task that I had given up on a long time ago. It has been a lot of fun learning to design and create such a useful tool. It is amazing to think that my little website could be seen all around the world, which makes it a great education tool when spreading the importance of practicing Sustainable Tourism!
Each student will effectively utilize multiple forms of writing and communication (i.e., written reflections, Microsoft Powerpoint or Corel Presentation slide shows, outline for discussion, debate, evaluation, and online reflections).
As I mentioned above, Pinterest has been another great tool to learn. The phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words" has never been more evident than on this website. It makes sense to use a picture website to grab attention. The most interesting and diverse form of communication I learned in this course was the use of infographics. In our society, long paragraphs do not go a long way. Most web users are browsing the internet way too quickly to stop and read a ton of words. Infographics are a great way to get information noticed. They are like little billboards that when done effectively, will suck readers in. I enjoyed the freedom of this course to communicate my thoughts in so many different ways. Using my blog for the majority of assignments made me care more about what I was writing since it was posted on the World Wide Web. I look forward to using these different ways of communicating my ideas in the future.
This particular outcome sums up this class pretty well for me. Before this semester I would not have been able to explain what sustainable tourism is, or why it is so important in today's society. Having finished this course, I can hardly believe I didn't know more about it in the first place because it is so important!
Our population is growing faster than it ever has, and with it technology. Technology has created affordable travel options for people who in the past would never have imagined going to the places that regular people go all the time now. As a result, tourism has become a gigantic industry, and is still growing. As people travel to more under-developed areas of the world, their carbon footprint has been leaving a mess. This includes things like: the extinction of small cultures, the over-use of resources, unfair trade and general stress on the environment.
In today's society we need to recognize the importance of preserving our fragile world. Now that we have the ability to visit different members of the global community, we need to do so responsibly. This includes things like: understanding the area you are traveling to, knowing the local's concerns and what they ask of their visitors, and being sure that the money you are spending is staying where you spend it, otherwise people and lands are being exploited.
Each student will demonstrate the effective use of technology to improve their writing and speaking. Students will need to demonstrate how they have utilized the online resources to improve their writing skills, incorporate photographs from the Internet, information from electronic journals, and online experts to improve and broaden their perspectives as indicated by the quality of their written and oral communication, and multi-media presentations.
The only way that sustainable tourism can take foot in our world and make a difference is if we all work together as a global community. I believe the best means of this is through education. Writing a blog, and advertising my blog through Pinterest has taught me how effective the internet really is. I have never been inclined to learning the ways of the internet, but slowly I have had to give in as it has become a necessity for finding a job.
I appreciated our early on website evaluations to help me understand how to find a useful source for information. I have always relied on scholarly journals because I was afraid to venture into the web where we all know liars are afoot. It was great to find ways to single out websites with useful information. This really came in handy when searching for information on the Himba since I actually couldn't find too much in the scholarly journals.
It has been wonderful learning how to build a simple, and free, website. I love Weebly.com! Before this class, website building was a daunting task that I had given up on a long time ago. It has been a lot of fun learning to design and create such a useful tool. It is amazing to think that my little website could be seen all around the world, which makes it a great education tool when spreading the importance of practicing Sustainable Tourism!
Each student will effectively utilize multiple forms of writing and communication (i.e., written reflections, Microsoft Powerpoint or Corel Presentation slide shows, outline for discussion, debate, evaluation, and online reflections).
As I mentioned above, Pinterest has been another great tool to learn. The phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words" has never been more evident than on this website. It makes sense to use a picture website to grab attention. The most interesting and diverse form of communication I learned in this course was the use of infographics. In our society, long paragraphs do not go a long way. Most web users are browsing the internet way too quickly to stop and read a ton of words. Infographics are a great way to get information noticed. They are like little billboards that when done effectively, will suck readers in. I enjoyed the freedom of this course to communicate my thoughts in so many different ways. Using my blog for the majority of assignments made me care more about what I was writing since it was posted on the World Wide Web. I look forward to using these different ways of communicating my ideas in the future.