Effectiveness of Educational Tour towards Competency Enhancement of BSHM Students in Bestlink College of the Philippines

Vol.3, No.1B

Abstract

Educational tours are a learning experience vital for hospitality and tourism students. Through these tours, they acquire authentic experience and valuable knowledge for future endeavours. The skills they observe from the people and hospitality and tourism professionals they encounter during these tours help them reflect upon their learnings.

According to the Commission on Higher Education Department Memorandum Order (CMO) No.63 series of 2017 entitled Policies and Guidelines on Local Off-Campus Activities, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Philippines ensure sustainable teaching and learning delivery processes through off-campus activities. HEIs conduct these activities to supplement and facilitate a more meaningful learning experience for students in addition to the regular classroom instructional programs under specific degree program requirements. These also include non-curricular activities. They are intended to broaden the student's learning opportunities and allow them to feel the real world, and therefore serve as a powerful motivator to strengthen the academe-industry linkage. These learning situations include internships, educational tours or field trips, field studies, educational linkages, student development activities, non-curricular-based activities such as mission-based, immersion/reach-out programs, conventions, conferences, pieces of training, volunteer work, interschool competitions, cultural performances, and team development activities, among others.

Bestlink College of the Philippines is one of the educational institutions in the Philippines that offers hospitality and tourism-related courses. Bestlink College of the Philippines already had several tours, training, and camps from the year 2017 until the year 2020, which made the students' learning process significant and entertaining. Several studies have been published on educational tours. However, there has yet to be a study on the effectiveness of educational tours towards competency enhancement, specifically among third-year and fourth-year students of the BSHM in Bestlink College of the Philippines.

This chapter deals with the methodological procedure by which the data of the research problems were collected. This includes the Research Design, Respondents of the study, Sampling techniques, Instrument Used, Construction of the questionnaire, Validation of the instrument, Administration and retrieval of the questionnaire, and the Statistical treatment of data. The result of this study is to determine the effectiveness of educational tours in the competency enhancement of third and fourth-year BHSM students at Bestlink College of the Philippines to provide input for the continual improvement of educational tours and field trips at BCP.

This chapter presents the summary of findings produced from the data analysis, as well as the conclusion of the study and recommendations formed from the study findings.