Our thanks to Glasgow Caledonian University Audio-Visual Services for assistance in recording this series of video interviews.

The ‘Talking Tourism’ collection is curated by Dr. Karen Thompson of the University of Strathclyde Business School. Her PhD investigated the links between public transport use and visitor satisfaction. Her academic interests have expanded upon this theme and now encapsulate urban tourism, destination transport and visitor behaviour and satisfaction.

Karen got involved with the Spoken Word after being referred to the project’s services by her colleague Dr. Kevin O’Gorman. The collection was funded by the REAP (Re-Engineering Assessment Practices in Scottish Higher Education) project and had the aim of redesigning Dr. Thompson’s ‘Introduction to Tourism Class’ in order that the students gained a better engagement with the course. This restructuring involved a 50% reduction in the time that students spent in lectures, which was replaced by podcasts, regular online tests and the enhancement of lectures with technologies such as electronic voting systems.

This collection is made up of around 70 BBC programmes that concentrate on various tourism related points of interest including the new Airbus A380 and the bombing of several tourist locations in Bali. The 70 collected programmes were also used to create video podcasts that were tailored to Dr. Thompson’s syllabus and enhanced with her academic commentary. Research undertaken by the REAP project in regards to the success of Dr. Thompson’s re-engineered class found that the overall exam mark improved by 12.2% and the number of students recieving no qualification dropped by 25%. For a more in depth look at the success of the podcasts click here.

See all Spoken Word resources collected by Karen Thompson

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