Enhancing Studentsâ Class Participation in the Case of Second YearTourism Management Students on âÂÂResearch Methods in TourismâÂÂ

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to enhance students’ class participation in the case of second year tourism management students registered for ‘research methods in tourism’. In order to accomplish research objectives, data were collected from the second year tourism management students. All second yeartourism management students registered for the course research method in tourism were the participants of the study; the total numbers of the students are 65 but out of this 51 questionnaires were correctly filled and returned. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed with descriptive research design. Self-administered questionnaire, 5 FGD having 12 members and observations for some sessions were used to collect the data. The reported instruments were prepared in English and they include both open ended and close ended type of questions; open ended questionnaires were prepared not to limit respondent’s idea. Once the data collection stage was over, collected responses were organized in the form of tables by using percentage and Chi-square analysis. The result revealed that student’s level ofparticipation is highly affected by different factors such as in advance preparation, delivery of teaching material in advance, applying different active teaching methods by the instructor, availability of different rewarding means, mixing low achievers with medium and high achievers, language and student self-confidence. As a result, majority of the students (86.3%) have positive attitude on active participation since they believed that active participation will help them to share new ideas with their friends. Though some students are still inactive perhaps due to different psychological and personal factors that need further investigation; the actions implemented also bring some important changes that enhanced students’ class participation.