Exploring the Use of Blended Learning in Tourism Education

The last few years have registered a dramatic increase in Internet use in education and a continued investment by educational institutions to increase the integration of technology components into their course offerings. While many have embraced the introduction of online components on the academic experience, some fear that online courses lack the interaction component so critical to the traditional academic experience. In response, there is a growing belief that rather than advocating online or face-to-face learning methods, one should capitalize on the strengths of both methods and examine the effectiveness of blended methods. Therefore, the purpose was to explore the influence of perceptions of online and face-to-face interaction on student satisfaction and performance on a blended learning tourism marketing assignment. The results revealed that students' satisfaction was influenced by their online interactions with other students, the instructor and specific content but that they had no effect on assignment grade. The findings suggest that instructors should consider the use of online tools to improve student satisfaction and that more research is needed to examine the link of online materials and student performance. (C) 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.