Digital technologies and foreign language learning in tourism studies

Abstract

In order to foster the development of key competences, a research project was carried out at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management CETT-UB (EUHT CETT-UB) from the University of Barcelona (Spain). The participants were a group of 16 students of English as a Foreign Language. They worked on a research project in groups and presented it orally to the rest of the class, who had to assess their peers’ performance. All the project presentations were video recorded and the recordings were included in a weblog which the students could access freely. They could thus watch their own performance and those of other students, as well as comment on their strengths and weaknesses. A thorough analysis of the blog posts led to the conclusion that the students provided more positive than negative feedback, focusing on a wide range of aspects. In addition, the results showed that the posts reflected the awareness-raising work on reflective assessment that had been carried out during the academic period. This project gave rise to subsequent pedagogical actions based on the use of blogs with the involvement of other groups of students at EUHT CETT-UB. Our experience can be used as a model by other institutions, as such methodology can be applied in classes based on oral presentations, regardless of the topic they are covering and the language used.