Pancoe Method: A New Experience in Heritage Tourism Education

Introduction

Some critical voices have claimed that the maturation of tourism research is coincident with a much deeper crisis in tourism education. Per their viewpoint, classic tourism education engages with a managerial perspective of the industry which today does not give coherent training to the next professionals. The globalization of major risks is threatening the tourism industry as never before. In this context, global risks, which include natural disasters and ecological crises if not terrorism as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, have placed the industry between the wall and the deep blue sea. Education offers a fertile ground to provide policymakers with creative solutions to the nagging problems the industry goes through (Sheldon, Fesenmaier, & Tribe 2011; Ayikoru, Tribe, & Airey, 2009; Farmaki 2018; Ndou, Mele, & del Vecchio, 2019). To these problems, one must add the lack of updating in classic curricula mainly associated with the apathy of students to select tourism or hospitality-related careers. Many postgraduate students experience excessive working hours and low-paid jobs (Korstanje & George, 2022).

As the previous argument is given, the present case study is designed to stimulate the learning skills of year 1 undergraduate (UG) students registered for a Bachelor in tourism. Participants involved in the experiment come from surrounding countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil and Chile. The case explores the role of pleasure (joy) as an optimizer of learning abilities and skills while offering an innovative technique in tourism education and marketing. Students went through different teambuilding activities like cooking, baking bread, and food tasting. Current curricula in traditional tourism education do not consider the role of pleasure to improve the learning experience. PANCOE is a successful programme used by the Laboratory of Joy to boost students´ performances PANCOE has proven potential for stimulating socially deprived students as well as students living in politically unstable and unsafe destinations.

The experiment was run using two different focus groups (10-20 participants in each group). The main goal of the laboratory was to associate the creativity of gifted students with Artificial intelligence and digital social networks such as Twitter. Secondly, the Laboratory of Joy explores and acknowledges the importance of smart ideas generated through the formation of safe social networks. The students mingling allow rapid optimization of learning. This study coins the term collective intelligence to denote the performance of groups in exams and test contexts.

The experiment was based on a sample of 870 participants who regularly use Twitter (Twitter-@holapancoe). The sample divides into active and passive participants. Whilst the former refers to tourism undergraduate students who are experimenting PANCOE (40 students), the latter refers to students –coming from other universities or areas- but not involved in the experiment (830 participants). The cohort ranges from 18 to 25 years old. Initially, the sample was made of tourism undergraduate students taking a specific course called Integration, Ambientacion y communication (Communication, environmentalism and integration). PANCOE is looking at integrating the senses of students with their emotions, academic performance and digital platforms. PANCOE devotes efforts to transforming negative feelings like fear into positive ones like joy.

The main learning objectives are as follows:

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  To facilitate the inclusion of foreign students who are joining a course as year 1 students in tourism and hospitality careers.

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  To optimize the student learning experience, alongside reducing the rate of students who drop out.

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  To implement innovative methods to improve traditional tourism education, using tourism marketing case studies