Success Project

Due to the dynamics of the student-centred approach and the simulated business environment, subsequent learning experiences and pedagogical approaches are dependent on student initiatives. Students are encouraged to explore other areas of tourism business, for example, festival and events tourism, in the sense that they often conceptualise and arrange events. The annual hosting of an Association for Tourism and Leisure Education and Research (ATLAS) webinar where the honours students present on a topical subject to an international audience encompassing all continents is a case in point, for example, the 2020 "Before, During and After COVID-19". One of the vital components of the module and business is encouraging creativity and problemsolving within a group to foster skills and competencies, such as teamwork. Along with interpretative officer of the UP Museums, the 2022 UPCT group identified a gap in the UPCT tour experience in that there was a lack of site-specific souvenirs to offer visitors to the campus as a keepsake of their visit. Since a souvenir is much more tangible than a tour experience, the learning experience was facilitated by introducing a design sprint where the group of 15 students were divided into three groups of five students to compete in the design of multiple prototypes for potential souvenirs for the UP Museum client. Based on a need to streamline business processes and productivity, the UPCT group of 2022 used the experiences chronicled in the book Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz to emulate the shared belief that our "best work happened when [we] had a big challenge and not quite enough time" (Knapp, Zeratsky & Kowitz, 2016: 2). Although the design sprint process hails from a business environment to streamline prototyping, save time and financial resources in developing products for the market, it can and has also been successfully adapted in several university environments across disciplines and fields. The five-day process involves active learning through a project-based learning approach that recognises that: “several important and difficult to teach skills can be enhanced in students while they work on authentic projects. The experience, in general, is very close to what students will find in their professional life” (Ferreira & Canedo, 2020: 1192). Considering the time constraints in teaching modules and other limited capabilities for experiential learning, the design sprint was thus a natural choice as a new teaching approach to pilot in order to meet the SUCSESS project goals of increased "graduate employability with real life projects during their studies". The student groups were given just a week to design, brainstorm, research and prototype their souvenir, which were then tested by presenting them to the aforementioned clients for their appropriateness as souvenirs for different visitors to the University of Pretoria campus. During the process, the students collaborated with the University of Pretoria Museums and the University of Pretoria MakerSpace to prototype these souvenirs through 3D printing. The students had to prepare costing for mass production and then present final prototypes at a presentation to representatives from the various UPCT clients, which included a panel of judges. The three prototypes produced included the “Timeless Clock” (Figure 6.3), the “UP Museums Memory Box” (Figure 6.4) and the “Key holder” (Figure 6.5) all representing different aspects of the UP Museums or its collections. 78

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