Developing a pedagogical model for decentralized tourism education

The main objective of the TravEd Research project is to develop a pedagogical model that exploits mobile technologies and electronic learning environments and that is applied especially to develop decentralized tourism education in tourist destinations with extremely mobile tourism students. Developmental work in the project will be carried out through design-based research (DBR). The approach to learning arises from the socio-cultural tradition inherent to the activities, culture, context, and environment in which the learning takes place. The focuses of attention are collaborative teaching studying learning (TSL) processes during which several types of applications that also enable smartphone use are utilized. This paper presents the theoretical underpinnings of the project and the first cycle of DBR that will be carried out during an apprenticeship period.