IMPACTING LEARNING OUTCOMES FOR TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY OPEN DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) PROGRAMMES BY ENHANCING STUDENTS’ LEARNING ERGONOMICS

ABSTRACT

This paper is intended to suggest improvement to learning ergonomics to reduce non completion rate among Malaysia students within the government’s lifelong learning programmes particularly among tourism and hospitality professionals who are pursuing higher education and continuous professional development (CPD) training via open distance learning (ODL) programmes. Learning ergonomics relates to the design of the learning characteristics, processes and the environment which is intended to support, influence and impact on learning performance adaptability. Effective learning ergonomics offers improvements to the course design, meaningful learning experiences, student comfort and subsequently higher completion study rates. This chapter believes by understanding our learners (i.e their perspectives and narratives as learners, professionals and member of a given community) by means of profiling, learning ergonomics can be enhanced and improve the learning outcomes. The tourism and hospitality students’ profile and narratives can help to improve the institutional, physical and mindset ergonomics in their respective vocational programmes. Their lives provide a narrative that could establish learner’s voice on the respective learning experiences. This can result in possible improvements in course design, facilitation of meaningful and inviting learning experiences, student comfort and productivity. The accumulation of these attributes could reduce learning frustrations in tourism educational and promote a better structured learning experience and success and reduced attrition rates among the learners.