Bridging Disciplinary Divides through Computational Social Sciences and Transdisciplinarity in Tourism Education in Higher Educational Institutions: An Austrian Case Study

Abstract

Grand societal issues such as climate change and technological disruption challenge all industry sectors, including tourism. To cope with these challenges, new sustainable business models that not only rely on data-driven technologies but also require new ways of collaboration beyond disciplines and sectors by facilitating the overall conception of transdisciplinarity are essential. One potential way to combine all these requirements is computational social sciences. As a discipline-crossing approach, it should be anchored within tourism education to train the future workforce and experts necessary to realize the needed transformation. Thus, this study explores the status quo of tourism curricula in higher educational institutions in Austria through the lens of computational social sciences. In doing so, a set of core modules of computational social sciences content was developed as an analytical framework. The results show that there is still a significant gap between the demands of the tourism industry and the offered educational programs in Austria. The article concludes with insights on how to close the existing gap and some suggestions for possible foundational steps to support the transformation.

A Review of Service Design Pedagogy to Identify Potential Added Value to Product Innovation in Higher Education

“…As discussed previously, education on sustainable development is widely applied, for instance, in applications related to the development of sustainable tourism [119], the teaching of engineering [120], and tourism education in higher education [121]. Versteijlen and Wals [122] conducted a blended learning method to reduce HEI's climate impact by reducing student travel to and from campus and students' sustainability competencies.…”