A Situational Task-Driven Teaching Protocol for Undergraduate Tourism Management Education

This article presents a 16-week situational, task-driven teaching protocol for undergraduate tourism management education, evaluated in four intact classes at Xi'an FanYi University. Two administratively assigned classes received situational task-driven teaching, and two received conventional lecture- and case-based instruction. The protocol connected visitor analysis, resource matching, route design, market analysis, budgeting, digital promotion, and bilingual presentation through staged production, feedback, revision, and reflection. Evaluation combined baseline and post-course assessments, implementation records, team and individual task scores, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. Of 112 enrolled students, 110 initially consented and one withdrew consent, leaving 109 eligible for outcome-specific data use; 102 formed the complete-record subset. Paired tourism-planning measurements were available for 53 situational task-driven and 52 conventional students, with mean gains of 19.03 and 10.69 points, respectively. Professional-knowledge gains in the complete-record subset averaged 18.61 and 11.72 points. Interviews with 20 students identified authentic scenarios, feedback, collaboration, and digital-tool use as valued features, alongside time pressure and bilingual-expression difficulties. Several questionnaire reliability coefficients were below 0.70. The protocol provides a structured approach to course delivery and assessment, but the four-class nonrandomized design, shared team scores, incomplete observations, and measurement limitations restrict the findings to descriptive evidence. Comparative efficacy and causality were not established.