DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES IN TOURISM ECONOMICS BASED ON EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

Nowadays, new technologies are playing a fundamental role in developing and improving the ways in which teaching processes can be applied in universities throughout the world. Alicante University is not unaware of this trend, and is committed to develop projects concerning with the application of new technological resources to education. In fact, one of the main aims of the Vice-Chancellor’s Office of Educational Technology and Innovation has been, and still is, to support the inclusion and development of new teaching strategies based on the aforementioned means by investing financial resources in this field.
Within this context, a research team called GiteTur was created in order to make the most of the initiative, applying the most effective use of the available resources and improving the teaching of tourism as far as possible.
Taking into account the previous conditions that have been explained above, this paper describes the different aspects of the technological teaching resources introduced by the teachers involved in this project. It also presents the main conclusions that they were able to draw from an experience that consisted in creating a wiki (WikiTur) and a blog (BlogTur) on which their students could upload their work and opinions with respect to the economic aspects of the syllabus (Introduction to Economics, Tourism degree; first year). These contributions could then be applied to comment and criticise either the problems of the tourism sector or the current situation of the economy. The information obtained from a student survey and the qualitative analysis of its results provided the necessary data and method to reach the final conclusions that are described in this paper.