education

In June of last year, Prof. Dr. Dagmar Lund-Durlacher took over as Chair of the BEST Education Network, which is an international consortium of educators committed to furthering the development and dissemination of knowledge in the field of sustainable tourism. One of the most important happenings within the network is the annual Think Tank, where new research is presented, sustainable tourism topics are addressed, and research and educational materials for use in undergraduate education are developed.

This year the annual Think Tank of the BEST Education Network was hosted at MODUL University Vienna. The BEST EN is an international consortium of educators committed to furthering the development and dissemination of knowledge in the field of sustainable tourism. At a BEST EN Think Tank, research is presented, sustainable tourism topics are addressed, and research and educational materials for use in undergraduate education are developed. 

From April 15-18, 2010, the fourth Future of Tourism Education Summit took place in San Sebastian, Spain. This year 33 representatives of 20 leading universities offering study programs in tourism attended the Summit in order to discuss the future of tourism education. MODUL University Vienna was represented by Professor Dagmar Lund-Durlacher and Professor Karl Wöber.  

Website: http://trc.aiest.orgThe Tourist Research Center (TRC), in co-operation with MODUL University Vienna, has just launched its new website which aims to foster collaboration among its members in an online environment. TRC and MODUL University Vienna jointly developed and implemented this first online representation to create visibility of the club of tourism researchers and consultants.

The Young Hotelier Award is organized by the General Managers Council (GMC) representing the five star luxury hotels at Vienna. The award is aiming at fostering young hoteliers by training them and awarding the most talented one.

MODUL University Vienna is supporting the Young Hotelier Award by holding two workshops

Members of MODUL University Vienna (Ponocny, Bauernfeind, Zins) are involved in a methodological work on the OECD PISA study. This study is an international assessment of students’ performance which takes place every three years in many countries all over the world. A special focus of the methodological analyses are dimensionality issues, that is, whether the strategy of building scales and publishing results on scale level but not on the level of individual items is empirically justified. With respect to competences, PISA compares countries based on Mathematics, Science and Reading performances of students who are around 15 years old.

Professor Lund-Durlacher held a presentation at this year’s Sustainability Conference 2008 (Nachhaltigkeitskonferenz 2008) in Pielachtal, Austria, where more than 100 industry experts discussed the role sustainability can take in the future development of the tourism industry. The integration of multiple aspects of sustainability – social, ecological and economical - was exemplified in the conference theme Sustainability as a Chance (Nachhaltigkeit als Chance).