| dc.description.abstract | Abstract
＂Community＂ refers to a group of people with the same goal together. A community with a common learning goal has been coined as ＂professional learning community＂(PLC). PLC is popular and been applied to all walks of life especially in the era of internet. The members of the community can learn collaboratively without the time and space constraints. In this study, the participants were tour guides and tour managers. The tourism practitioners provide special services to customers. The satisfaction of customers depends on the quality of the tourism practitioners. This study evaluated the development of a ＂Tourist Professional Learning Platform＂ (TPLP) where the tourism practitioners can plan tourist itinerary, records tourist itinerary, calculate tourist on-time rate, share tour pictures, tour recording, and suggestions from specialists. The tourism practitioners can learn and discuss tour-related issues with their community members on the platform.
The participants in this study were invited from the fans of “Tour Guide” and “Tour manager” clubs on facebook. They were asked to finish a questionnaire aiming to explore their perceived usefulness, overall ease of use, and willingness of use after they experienced and operated TPLP. 62 valid questionnaires were collected. Among the 62 participants, all of them are qualified tour guides with certifications, 48 have been engaging tour work. The results showed that the participants had positive feedback on perceived usefulness, overall ease of use, and willingness of use on the platform. In addition, different backgrounds, such as years of experience, positions, education backgrounds were then analyzed. The results showed that participants with different backgrounds may have different perceptions and suggestions on TPLP.
Keywords: tour manager, professional learning community, collaborative learning, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, willingness of use. | en_US |