Update by Hillary

My contribution to the project work has had to take a back seat for the past 5 days or so as responsibilities regarding programme management and the creation of a programme document for our school's new Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism have taken priority. The work for this is comprehensive - the document is printed and now awaits approval from AAC next Thursday. I have a meeting with Robyn Hogan from AAC to go over the procedure and any questions which are likely to arise.

I have also started the coordination of development work for this programme which is on a fast track as we start the programme on Feb 12. Who needs weekends.

Back to the DIT diploma. It has taken at times been difficult to know when to stop developing in one area. You keep finding new information and sources during your research that it is so tempting to rework what you have already completed. Trying hard not to do this and also time restraints have stopped this. I have nearly finished my section of the Tourism Industry but need a good run of at, which is hard when I am dealing with other pressing issues. Next week. In the meantime I have started on geography and will work on that this weekend.

I have had to put on hold our intended two day workshop but will have to dedicate next Friday to hopefully catching up with Sunshine (our designer) and Leigh so that we can go over the Blackboard set up. I have also been keeping an eye on enrollments as our programme has been under strategic and financial review - they are looking viable so that is good. In the meantime back to developing and taking some photos.

Cheers

Tourism Industry/Geography

Hillary and I met at Polytech on Saturday for a couple of hours to discuss resources and try to complete tourism industry. Still havent finished. Everything seems to take so much time!
Kevin joined us yesterday to discuss ideas for the Geography module. We divided up different topics and will meet again on Thursday at 1.00pm to check on progress.

New blog

I invited Hillary to join and she has posted blogg but somehow have started a new one (I think). Group name is Diploma in International Tourism - not sure if can combine bloggs!!!!

New digital cameras !!

New digital cameras arrived yesterday - we will do some training so can make good use of all the features for adding pictures to our information

Developing International Tourism Course

Hillary and I have decided on the structure of each module of the course. Each section will include lesson plans, a reading and question, a discussion point, multi-choice test (revision only), a powerpoint with teaching resource (notes), and supporting material.

In the future we wish to add effects to the picture as shown in Blackboard. eg add an introductory marketing lecture, or sounds

Day 2

We were joined by Wendy Ritson-Jones from the library. Today we reviewed what we have done or not done so far.

We discussed the use of Wikiversity and some of the consequences of opening up the content of the programmes. We have had some interest in the polytechnic from students from Brazil who wish to join our programmes and gain work experience here. This was an amazing outcome which we are not yet prepared for but wish to be.

We then posted some more material for First Line Management on to wikiversity.


We don't actually know yet if we can copy this in this way as it is a TANZ resource - we are awaiting a response from TANZ. In the meantime we are putting content outlines - not the actual content.

Front Line Management Course on Wikiversity

We meet as a group with Leigh who demonstrated how to duplicate a course from Blackboard on to Wikiversity for auditing purposes and we discussed the advantages of allowing global access to the Front Line Management course as content can be updated.
The format in wikiversity is very easily formated and readable and allows access via a search in google.