TH&E Standards

Meeting the Standard for tourism, hospitality and events

As the ‘custodian’ of the Tourism, Hospitality and Events Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Higher Education, CAUTHE facilitates workshops for assessment design, benchmarking or other associated activities through the Meeting the standard for tourism, hospitality and events project. This project supports colleagues in implementation of the Standards in their institutions building on the work of:

  • The Setting the Standard: Establishing Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) for Tourism, Hospitality and Events Higher Education in Australia project, lead by Paul Whitelaw, Pierre Benckendorff, Judith Mair and Michael Gross, which developed material, information and resources as part of the academic standards project funded by the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) in 2013.
  • The Tourism, Hospitality and Events Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Higher Education, the outcome of the above project, is a set of nationally agreed upon and clearly articulated TLOs for tourism, hospitality and events higher education coursework programs at Australian Qualification Framework bachelor (level 7) and coursework masters (level 9).

Resources

2024 workshop

Designing and demonstrating advanced student learning – 6 February 2024

Held on Tuesday 6 February 2024 from 9:00-15:00 at The Hedberg, Hobart prior to the CAUTHE 2024 Conference. Accreditation requires institutions evidence that the students engage with and achieve advanced knowledge and inquiry. ‘Advanced’ is based upon the level of study and the expected learning outcomes. Crucially, the ‘expected learning outcomes’ incorporate the tourism, hospitality and events threshold learning outcomes (The Standards). In this workshop we unpack what ‘advanced’ means and how this is demonstrated. Using this as a framework, we then look to assess and modify a unit’s outcomes, content, and learning activities to align with the expectations. Outcomes from this workshop include an understanding of how advanced learning and inquiry is characterised, the capacity to assess the demonstration at a unit level, and the means to address evident gaps in these profiles. Download Agenda.

2023 Mid-year workshops

Staff sufficiency: Understanding, assessing and developing staff sufficiency – 27 July 2023

Date: Thursday 27 July 2023
Time: 13:00-16:00 (AEST)
Location: Online via Zoom

In this workshop participants will be guided through accreditation ‘staff sufficiency’ needs. Staff sufficiency is a combined demonstration of educators’ discipline or field qualifications, research or industry achievements, and educational expertise. A fictional institutional case study will be used to explore the nuances of assessing staff sufficiency, identifying gaps, and prioritising short-term actions. Using the assessment outcomes, development plans for long-term staff sufficiency will be crafted. Download Agenda.

Implementation of the standards at my institution: Understanding the enablers and barriers for adoption – 24 February 2023

A workshop on Implementation of the standards at my institution: Understanding the enablers and barriers for adoption was held on Friday 24 February | 1:00-3:00pm (AEDT) via Zoom. Download Agenda.

2022 workshops

Mid-Year JHTM Special Edition workshop – 22 July 2022

The 2022 Mid-Year TH&E Standards Workshop will be held online from 14:00-16:30 pm on Friday 22 July. The purpose of the workshop was to develop a JHTM Special Issue plan. The goals and expectations were outlined by the Editor-in-Chief and Special Issue editors. Members self-allocated into topic area groups, craft ideas, gain feedback, and develop a paper plan. A timeline for completion was developed.

Best practice in academic staffing: Auditing, mapping, and developing staff knowledge, skills, qualifications – 3 February 2022

This workshop continued the work of 2020-2021 Course and Assessment Design workshop series, in which the threshold learning outcomes journey, from course design to benchmarking was tracked. This workshop focussed on accreditation, including academic staffing: qualifications, professional experience, scholarly activity, and the related maintaining of these; a common demonstration challenge.The workshop was held in the week prior to the CAUTHE 2022 Hybrid conference. There was no charge for registration for CAUTHE members or one Chapter representative from each institution if attending the workshop only.

2021 Assessment Planning and Benchmarking workshops

Assessment Planning workshop – 25 June 2021

The aims of this online workshop were to:

  • outline a systematic planning process for the design and development of an assessment program for students’ scaffolded demonstration of the tourism, hospitality and events threshold learning outcomes (TLOs).
  • utilise the constructive alignment approach to centralise the TLO demonstration within the assessment program.

Importantly, it was highlighted that the approach can and should be nested within the wider outcome and assessment requirements of the degree program. A participant wrote following the workshop: I have just watched the Zoom recording and the material presented on the complexities of assessment design was amazing, great job guys! Glen is surely THE expert on constructive alignment and assessment/rubric design!!

View Recording

Benchmarking workshop – 16 July 2021

This successful online workshop focussed on quality metrics and quality improvement. Benchmarking is a quality improvement process using comparisons between current performance and past performance or other institutions’ performance. Importantly, benchmarking is a core element to TEQSA accreditation processes. The value of cross-institutional benchmarking was also discussed. Feedback from the workshop included: Thank you so much team COPs [College of Peers]!! Always a fantastic and eye opening (brain bending) experience.

View Recording

2019-2020 Assessment Design workshops

Assessment Design Workshop 5 – 4 February 2021

A TH&E Standards workshop was held online in the week prior to the annual CAUTHE 2021 Online Conference. The workshop continued the work of 2020 Mid-year workshop series, at which participants developed a TH&E Comprehensive rubric which addresses the tourism, hospitality and events Standards, from first-year N-/Low-Fail to graduate Masters HD. The workshop aimed to generate guidelines for specific assessment design as aligned with rubric, domains, and threshold learning outcomes. Download Agenda.

Assessment Design Workshop 4 – June & July 2020

The CAUTHE College of Peers met online over four meetings to complete this work. The outcome of the meetings was the development of a comprehensive rubric to measure students’ achievement of the tourism, hospitality, and events threshold learning outcomes. The rubric includes measures of student demonstration across the five domains (Service and Experience Design, Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Collaboration, Problem Solving, and Professional Responsibility), from first year bachelor’s through to final year master’s level. Download Program of Activities.

Assessment Design Workshop 3 – 10 February 2020

The all-day workshop was held immediately prior to the CAUTHE 2020 conference in Auckland, New Zealand. It was attended by 22 participants from 16 institutions and organisations. Participants presented exemplars in the fields of tourism, hospitality and events, which had been developed over previous workshops. The workshop then focussed on course mapping and scaffolding across programs, and rubric design.

The Executive committee expressed its sincere thanks to Assoc Prof Pierre Benckendorff and acknowledges Pierre’s enduring contribution to the development of the Standards, calibration and assessment design activities since funding was first obtained in 2013. Download Agenda.

Assessment Design Workshop 2 – 15 July 2019

The five domain participant volunteers from each of the three FIELDs, plus additional participants in attendance, worked together to develop principles around best practice assessments for FIELDS, and an ideal assessment for a FIELD. For more 2019 Mid-year meeting, HDR conference and workshops.

Assessment Design Workshop 1 – 11 February 2019

Peers developed and presented a ‘fit for purpose’, exemplary assessment to cover each of the five DOMAINS (Service and Experience Design, Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Collaboration, Problem Solving and Professional Responsibility) in each of the three FIELDS of study (tourism, hospitality or events) – a total of 15 assessment items. At the workshop each triad presented their work to the larger group which then developed principles around best practice assessments for DOMAINS. Download Agenda.

2017-2018 Calibration of Academic Standards

Calibration of Academic Standards (CAS) is a multistage intervention in which external peer reviewers examine an assessment task and samples of student work against one or more of the threshold learning standard domains before, during and after a calibration workshop. CAUTHE hosted CAS workshops during 2017-2018. The workshops aimed to:

  • Reach a shared understanding of what it means to meet the minimum standard in a chosen domain
  • Generate a shared understanding about assessments and outcome standards in comparable units being taught in different institutions

The body of material collected from calibration workshops informed the review of the 2015 TH&E Learning and Teaching Academic Standards. For more see:

2016-2017 Peer review of assessment

Peers who were acknowledged as discipline experts, reviewed and reported on the assessment methods and grading of students’ achievement of learning outcomes with reference to the tourism, hospitality and events (TH&E) Learning and Teaching Academic Standards. This collaborative process provided evidence that assessments and grading standards were appropriate and broadly comparable with those assessment practices occurring in other similar programs elsewhere. Participants from interested Chapter member institutions were invited to participate in this process. Download:

Building a college of peers workshop – 5 August 2016

  1. Minutes: TH&E Building a College of Peers workshop
  2. Background information: TH&E Building a College of Peers
  3. ERoS External Referencing of Standards report template (6 June 2016)
  4. ERoS Accompanying guide and information (6 June 2016)
  5. Lawson, R Assuring learning: Course mapping and data collection for assurance of learning
  6. Freeman, M External peer review models for coursework degrees (5 September 2014)

Reference

  • Bedford, Simon; Czech, Peter; Sefcik, Lesley; Smith, Judith; and Yorke, John, (2016), External Referencing of Standards (ERoS) – An example of a collaborative end-to-end peer review process for external referencing, Curtin University, Queensland University of Technology, University of Wollongong and RMIT University, 2016, 61p https://ro.uow.edu.au/uowbooks/13

College of Peers

The College of Peers is comprised of participants from CAUTHE Chapter member institutions and individual CAUTHE members, many of whom were involved with the original Setting the Standard project. For more information or if you are interested in participating in Meeting the Standard for tourism, hospitality and events contact the CAUTHE Secretariat.

Project Leaders

  • Dr Mieke Witsel

    School of Tourism & Hospitality Management

    Southern Cross University

  • Associate Professor Glen Croy

    Department of Management

    Monash University