{"id":5949,"date":"2020-06-17T09:59:27","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T01:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.ift.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/?p=5949"},"modified":"2020-06-17T09:59:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T01:59:27","slug":"tourism-event-management-students-serve-a-joyful-menu-of-online-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/tourism-event-management-students-serve-a-joyful-menu-of-online-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism Event Management students serve a joyful menu of online creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"\u4e2d\u6587\u6458\u8981 \/ Summary in Chinese<\/span>\n

Vanilla ice-cream and chilli sauce may seem a questionable combination, but it was the pick of the crop from \u201cWeird the Food\u201d, an extreme food pairing exercise held online by a group of Year 2 IFTM students taking the Tourism Event Management Bachelor Degree Programme.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe combination is surprising,\u201d admits IFTM Lecturer Mr. Billy Im. Mr. Im gave the green light for the students to deliver Weird the Food as part of a series of online events called \u201cNutritious Delicious\u201d, a tongue-in-cheek attempt to help Macao people eat healthy food.<\/p>\n

The series of events were part of a project for a course called Supervised Work Experience. The latter gives students the knowledge and practical skills required to plan, organise and hold events. The importance of project management is highlighted in the course, including effective planning, budgeting and scheduling.<\/p>\n

This is a hands-on course that includes hosting events as a technique to promote learning. \u201cIn the second semester of each academic year, we usually hold the annual IFTM alumni dinner,\u201d says Mr. Im. The students oversee everything needed to make the event happen; they find the venue, obtain quotations from vendors, set the menu, market the event, sell tickets and welcome guests at the dinner.<\/p>\n

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Im says students had spent 2 weeks thinking of ideas for the dinner and were excited by the project. But when physical attendance at classes was suspended, and most public events in Macao were either postponed or cancelled, the alumni dinner was also affected.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first we were very upset over the situation,\u201d says student Tony Iam. The students set about creating the Nutritious Delicious online series as a novel way to meet their course requirements. Tony was one of the general managers for the series of events.<\/p>\n

Joy of cooking<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nutritious Delicious began on 27 April with the release of \u201cNewtrition\u201d, a video of a staged cooking competition shared online. The message was that the right sort of preparation can turn nutritious ingredients into a healthy meal, Tony says.<\/p>\n

The video demonstrated some of those techniques in a way that Mr. Im says can \u201ceasily be replicated at home, even by those that aren\u2019t cooking experts\u201d.<\/p>\n

To create the Nutritious Delicious series, the students split into groups and assigned tasks for each individual. Video editing was one task and Tony says readying Newtrition meant 4 days of working late into the night.<\/p>\n

The weird food-matching session was next in the series and was streamed live on 30 April. \u201cThe students wanted to do something that was interesting and meaningful, and hopefully, that would bring a bit of joy to the audience,\u201d says Mr. Im.<\/p>\n

Looking back on Weird the Food, Tony says \u201cit was quite memorable\u201d. There is one particular highlight that has stayed with him. \u201cI guess one thing that did attract people was our facial expressions,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Live streaming helped create greater interaction with the audience. \u201cIf they wanted us to try something else or to hear our comments at that moment, we could do it,\u201d Tony says.<\/p>\n

The social media team for the series was led by 5 IFTM students left stranded outside Macao by the Covid-19 precautions, who worked remotely on the project. \u201cEven though they were not in Macao, they played a role,\u201d says Mr. Im.<\/p>\n

The students wrapped up the Nutritious Delicious series on 3 May with another live event streamed online, \u201cNutrition Village\u201d. The students based the event on a board game made popular by YouTube, called Werewolves, and ran with it.<\/p>\n

In Werewolves, the objective is for players to find the villain. \u201cIt\u2019s a game that involves strategy, teamwork and communication,\u201d says Tony. In the Nutrition Village version, the game\u2019s rouges were the unhealthy elements of our diet: too much sugar, high fat content, and excessive salt.<\/p>\n

New lessons<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the sudden switch to holding events online, the undergraduates taking Supervised Work Experience were motivated, proactive and enthusiastic. \u201cI was pleasantly surprised,\u201d says Mr. Im.<\/p>\n

The results went far beyond the expectations of the students and their lecturer. The Newtrition video was viewed more than 10,000 times and the number watching online either of the live events at any one time peaked at 100 viewers. That is a reasonable number for a city as unique as Macao, where Mr. Im says attracting audiences to online events can be a struggle.<\/p>\n

The students linked up with a Macao company that specialises in presenting live electronic gaming competitions to help deliver the series. That experience helped the students learn a lot about hosting online events, Mr. Im says.<\/p>\n

Tony says the feedback coming from IFTM staff and from friends of the students involved was positive. \u201cAt first, we feared no one would see our channel because nobody knew us,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Mr. Im says he has also learned a lot throughout the process. \u201cIn future, if students ask me if they can hold an event online, I will answer, \u2018Why not?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vanilla ice-cream and chilli sauce may seem a questionable combination, but it was the pick of the crop from \u201cWeird the Food\u201d, an extreme food pairing exercise held online by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,136],"tags":[581,1351,1413,93],"class_list":["post-5949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-degrees-offered-in-english","category-main_headline","tag-billy-im","tag-covid-19","tag-nutritious-delicious","tag-tourism-event-management"],"views":891,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5953,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949\/revisions\/5953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utm.edu.mo\/NewsPortal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}