Abstract:

Interdisciplinarity has been subject to a wider debate concerning practice, teaching and research paths, representing a huge challenge for teachers, who sometimes struggle to put it on the academic agenda. Nevertheless, interdisciplinarity can play a pivotal role in the knowledge creation process, as many intellectual and practical problems require interdisciplinary approaches. Additionally, interdisciplinarity can also help foster creativity and help advance academic knowledge by bridging gaps between different disciplines.

The growing importance of creativity and innovation among tour operators and tourism providers, prompted by increasingly demanding tourists, as well as by ever growing competition, has brought about the need to adopt new teaching methodologies, that combine theory and practice.

Based on this realization, this paper aims to present a comparison of the expectations and perceptions of students taking part in an interdisciplinary project (IP) implemented at the School of Hospitality and Tourism, from the Polytechnic of Porto, focussing on their insights regarding the potential of interdisciplinarity in tourism higher education. This project, which involved 60 students attending two different courses (Tourism Planning and Tourism Marketing), was developed and implemented with the collaboration of ATA – Village Tourism Association (an entity responsible for the management and promotion of a Portuguese Villages Network).

The students were divided into groups, and each group was responsible for creating a tourism product and the corresponding marketing and communication strategy for a specific village. The students’ initial expectations and final perceptions were collected using questionnaires, with questions regarding the project, in terms of its implementation, the practical application of theoretical concepts and the development of skills, allowing them to realize the importance of interdisciplinarity and giving them the opportunity to network with tourism entities.

If, at first, students expected the IP to enrich their knowledge and competences, perceiving it as useful, interesting, and potentially offering a complementary view of the two courses involved, by the end of the project, they described it as challenging and interesting, considering it to have significantly contributed to their learning process and knowledge acquisition, as well as the development of collaborative skills.

In addition, this interdisciplinary approach also allowed students to have a better grasp of the juxtaposition and complementarity of the two subjects, namely in terms of communication and the mutual integration of concepts, terms, procedures and methods from different fields of knowledge, fostering creativity and a shared sense of effort, stemming from the work on a common project.

Keywords:

Interdisciplinarity, Project-based Methodology, Rural/village Tourism, Tourism Education, Portugal.