Skills acquisition in Tourism Degree through case-based learning

Abstract

The labor market requires professionals with skills that go beyond the contents of the curriculum itself, the so-called key or cross curricular skills. This implies that those involved in the teaching-learning process of students must develop teaching methodologies that enable the appropriate acquisition of those skills. This paper aims to analyze whether the case study favors the development of generic skills more than traditional methodologies. This methodology has been applied to courses of Applied Economics taught in the Tourism Degree at the University of Jaen. Thus, by using inferential statistics applied to a sample of students divided into two groups (control group: those who were taught using traditional teaching methods; experimental group: those who have used case studies as their teaching methodology). The results obtained support that there are significant differences regarding the acquisition of key or cross curricular skills depending on the teaching methodology used. Therefore, the experience described here provides evidence that case study methodology could improve the acquisition of cross curricular skills by students taking the Tourism Degree at the University of Jaen.