Tourism studies institute expanding online delivery of courses

The Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) intends making all its courses available online and extending the use of multimedia technologies to deliver full-time and part-time courses to the institute's hundreds of students. During a visit to the ITS, Education Minister Louis Galea was given an overview of the use of e-learning technologies in the field of higher education and how the ITS has been using such technologies over the past few years.

He also met the training providers and participants in a four-day international training seminar that the ITS organised for Italian academics from Sicilian tourism and hospitality-related educational institutions on the use of e-learning and multimedia technologies.

The seminar was organised as part of the Saperi e Sapori Project, which is 75 per cent part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, Community Initiative Interreg IIIA, Italia-Malta Programme 2004-2006. This is a €364,692 project between the Istituto Professionale di Stato per i Servizi Alberghieri, della Ristorazione e Turistici "Federico II di Svevia imperatore", which is the project leader, the Parco Archaeologico e Paesaggistico della Valle dei Tempi di Agrigento, the Sopraintendenza Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Syracuse, the Royal Malta Yacht Club and the ITS.

The project seeks to promote partnership between Malta and Sicily in the field of tourism and hospitality through the promotion of local traditions and cultural research.