Methods Used in Undergraduate Study Programmes for Tourism and Sustainability at the University of Latvia

Globalisation in education sector, intense competition between universities in Latvia, increase in requirements of applied teaching from private companies, growing exactingness from students – it all makes base to improve University curricula using different active teaching techniques for better knowledge capture. In the case study of University of Latvia tourism study programme authors included practice of active teaching method application used to improve student understanding and competences including research, surveys, observations, shadowing, monitoring and register of the tourist tracks, expert interviews and industry seminars, discussions and interviews with industry stakeholders, field trips, different tourism sector enterprise and organisation visits inspections, colloquiums, research result presentations in seminars and conferences, knowledge enhancing for sustainability, best practices and systems used by other countries. Many of active learning methods are as additional activities for students not included in the compulsory part of studies, therefore it is needed to establish an additional separate entity for tourism and sustainability activities for applied teaching and research at university – Tourism and Sustainability Research Laboratory. Separate research entity gives possibility to involve interested students from different study programmes and cooperation with other faculties.