Dr Mieke Witsel

This paper uses a CDC framework for program evaluation to report and reflect on a pilot project conducted for undergraduate university students at a regional Australian university. The project aimed to develop and implement an eight-week support program for first year students from disadvantaged backgrounds, which targeted student social and institutional connectivity, resilience and wellbeing. The project drew strongly on a ‘whole of person’ approach (Nelson et al., 2009, p. 754) and was underpinned by the positive psychology work of Seligman (2011). The program was piloted with six participating students who met as a group, once a week for a 60-90 minute facilitated sessions. Students identified a significant increase in positive aspects (e.g., happiness, engagement, relationships, health) and decreases in negative aspects (e.g., loneliness, negative thinking). Student feedback contributed to the program. Overall, the CDC framework indicates the project was highly successful and positively influenced the students’ wellbeing and happiness.

This paper seeks to explore the role of the experiential learning method in teaching tourism landscape. A model has been developed to teach tourism landscape through analysis on the basis of Kolb's experiential learning theory. The sample group consists of sixty-five high school students aged 14-18 years. The proposed model was designed in three parts using a mixed research design; fieldwork, qualitative analysis, and thematic mapping as the components of experiential learning. The results show that the experiential learning method is effective in teaching tourism landscape. Students understood the concept of the landscape. It has been proven that the teaching model developed to interpret the landscape and its three-dimensional components on maps are suitable. This study is important as it suggests a new approach that can be used in tourism education.

Communication Skills for Business Professionals, second edition, is a student-friendly introduction to effective communication in the workplace. Engagingly written, the text covers foundational topics such as audience, influence, channels, conflict and persuasion, before investigating more complex areas such as intercultural communication, virtual communication, researching in the era of 'fake news' and strategies for successful written communication. Taking a broad and current approach to concepts of communication and workplaces, Communication Skills for Business Professionals explores situations from virtual meetings between indie creatives, to speeches given by politicians, while still covering more traditional forms of professional communication, such as pitching to boards and memos. New pedagogical features such as interactive questions and answers, skill builder class activities, margin definitions and links to online content make this book indispensable for teachers and students of communications alike.

In the growing body of research on globalisation of education, many studies focus on epistemology: knowledge and skills underlying the ‘doing’ of teaching practices. Herein, however, the ontological aspect of ‘being a teacher’ is neglected. This study developed a new holistic model to assist teachers working in transcultural settings. The model was applied to rich data engendered by a phenomenological study of four academics. Findings showed the academics’ sense of identity and value systems were expressed and modified, illustrating that a focus on epistemology alone does not necessarily ensure competent practice. These voices grant insights into successful transcultural teaching approaches.