Towards a design oriented and research informed curriculum

Continuously updated curriculum for Hospitality management

Whilst technological disruptions, in particular electronic distribution, made many hospitality educators aware of the unpredictability of our students’ professional future, a decade of economic crises, political turmoil, pandemic and war has only brought this vision more to the fore. For hospitality curricula, the consequence is that the idea of a stable technical and managerial skillset has given way to the search for a formula to continuously update educational content with the latest relevant developments. 

The goal of the project was to implement three innovations to address this need: 

• Systematically incorporating inquisitive powers in all programmes through design oriented and research informed approaches, not as a separate subject, but as the epistemological backbone of the curriculum;
• Involving students and faculty in the development of research lines through Learning Communities;
• Making a constant use of research findings to innovate educational content through a connected curriculum.

Bridge the research-practice gap

Development and implementation of the new curricula was based on discussions in literature about management education. Hospitality management is a young discipline within the field of business and management studies. One of the major challenges for this field is the question of how to bridge the research-practice gap. Although the observation that management research is often not relevant for practice is widely recognized, the discussion on how to solve it was limited. 

The research-practice gap cannot be easily solved by better and more efficient knowledge transfer. It is based in a fundamental difference in the type of knowledge interest of those who work in the management practice and the way knowledge is being produced.

In Hospitality management education the research-practice gap challenge is visible in the development of two divergent paradigms: academisation versus a more traditional vocational approach. The unresolved issue in this discussion is the role of practical education — almost definitory for hotelschools — in management education. 

Parallel processes were started to introduce the project principles in existing programmes (Bachelor and MBA) and to design a new master programme along the same lines. The reforms led to profound changes not only in educational content but also in organization design. The new programme was accredited and started for the first time in 2021. Both change management issues and the pandemic lockdowns as a confounding factor were the major challenges in the execution of the process.

Reformed curricula with a greater awareness of research

The evaluation of project outcomes was planned through a longitudinal study of students’ cognitive skills and industry feedback on student research. The first project was started but could not be terminated as lockdowns and online education affected the validity of findings. Industry and student feedback on the quality and relevance of graduation research, as well as a steep increase of successful completion without or with minimal delay are considered as preliminary indicators of a positive result of the project. 

The most important outcomes of the project are, in the first place, the reformed curricula; second, a greater awareness of the role of research, and greater engagement in research activities among faculty and students. The required dissemination as an element of students’ graduation research has contributed to the choice for relevant and timely topics as well as to the visibility and the prestige of student research. 

All educational reforms as implemented at Hotelschool The Hague are considered to be permanent improvements that allow for a shortened innovation cycle, thus making it easier to incorporate future innovations. The changed perception of the relation between research and practice is clearly visible in the HTH Labs project, which envisions the use of practical education outlets (restaurants and hotels) for experimental research. The restaurants have served already as an environment to test food waste reduction measures; experiments with the use of robots are planned in the near future. The interest for the use of design oriented research, in combination with the urgent implementation of online education during the pandemic, has led to a follow-up in an Erasmus+ project with Technological University Dublin, Haaga Helia University of Applied Sciences Finland and Universitat de les Illes Balears Spain to develop AR and VR enhanced learning spaces for real life learning.

Literature

Barends, E. and Rousseau, D.M., 2018. Evidence-based management: How to use evidence to make better organizational decisions. London/New York: Kogan Page Publishers

Holloway, S. S., van Eijnatten, F. M., Romme, A. G. L., & Demerouti, E. (2016). Developing actionable knowledge on value crafting: a design science approach. Journal of Business Research, 69(5), 1639-1643.

Lugosi, P. & Jameson, S. (2017). Challenges in hospitality management education: Perspectives from the United Kingdom. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 31, 163-172.

Oskam, J. A., Dekker, D. M., & Wiegerink, K. (Eds.). (2018). Innovation in Hospitality Education: Anticipating the Educational Needs of a Changing Profession. Cham: Springer.

Van Aken, J., Berends, H. (2018). Problem solving in organizations: A methodological handbook for business and management students. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Products and presentations

Oskam, J. A., de Visser-Amundson, A., & de Boer, B. (2021). Preparing Hospitality Graduates for a Volatile Future: The need for “Field Problem Solvers”. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 45(5), 902-904. https://doi.org/10.1177/10963480211020554

The new hospitality curriculum: preparing for the unknown, Keynote at the 2nd International Research Round Table, César Ritz Colleges, Brig, Switzerland - March 9, 2022

Preparing ‘field problem solvers’: the design of a research informed hospitality management curriculum at Hotelschool The Hague, presentation at the 3d International Research Symposium, Hotelschool The Hague https://www.hotelschool.nl/research/symposium-2022 - June 9, 2022

Hospitality Education: Preparing Students for Times of Uncertainty, Presentation at THE INC, Limassol, Cyprus https://theinc2022.wordpress.com/ - June 22, 2022