As the world grapples with the urgent need for sustainable development, educational institutions have a pivotal role in shaping the next generation of leaders and thinkers. In this exclusive interview, Professor Christian Schott, Associate Professor in Tourism Management at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, discusses the complexities of sustainable tourism, the importance of experiential learning, and how universities can contribute to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through his innovative projects and leadership, Professor Schott sheds light on how academia can balance economic, environmental, and social demands while preparing students for a rapidly changing global landscape.
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Q. Given your extensive research on sustainable tourism, how do you balance the economic benefits of tourism with its potential environmental and social impacts?
A. While all three pillars of sustainability are crucial and need to be balanced, compromises are needed. These compromises, which are needed in recognition of the tensions between the three pillars of sustainability, need to be directed by the communities that are affected by tourism development. This means that all stakeholders should have a voice, but that those who are most affected which in tourism are the host community have the strongest voice. Additionally, there is a slight imbalance between the three pillars in that the natural environment is the most important of the three pillars because if the natural environment is not ‘well’ and looked after, it is difficult to achieve a thriving society and a thriving economy.
Q. Your research on youth travel highlights the importance of self-development and long-term mobility. How can educational institutions like Victoria University of Wellington support students in developing these skills and exploring global opportunities?
A. While independent travel, particularly independent long-term travel, is the most significant catalyst for self-development universities can play a role in fostering both mobility and self-development through effective exchange programmes as well as programmes for learning that take students off-campus and on field trips or field study. Field trips such as day field trips who, field trips within the university's own country, or field trips with groups of students and a teacher to places abroad used to be quite embedded in several disciplines including geography, geology, history, and biology. While they have become less common due to financial pressures, workload pressures, and increasing reluctance to engage in activities that are perceived as risky by universities, together with university exchanges these field trips are powerful mechanisms for universities to support both learning and personal development. At Victoria University of Wellington, we also have award-winning extracurricular leadership programmes that are designed to support our students to become international leaders through learning and self-development while completing their degrees with us. The two leadership programmes are the Wellington International Leadership Programme and the Wellington Plus Programme
Q. The VR-for-sustainability project is an innovative approach to education. Can you elaborate on the specific learning outcomes and benefits for students using this technology?
A. The world is facing many wicked and pressing challenges. These challenges are manifested in many aspects of our lives, including when we go on holiday. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a global road map for dealing with these challenges, which includes SDG4 Quality Education as a vehicle for both improving education for all in all parts of the world, as well as improving the quality of education for sustainability. One of the core pedagogies for fostering meaningful learning about social, cultural and environmental issues is Dewey’s experiential education, which has been effectively used to bridge theory and practice by generations of learners at primary, secondary and tertiary levels over the last 100 years. However, experiential education for sustainability often entails learning from and about people in distant places that are facing challenges which our students need to understand and develop responses to. For instance, in my area, which is Sustainable Tourism Management education and research, these challenges can include a feeling of ‘overtourism’ and alienation by residents of Venice, or the rising seas level and profound cultural impacts on traditional communities living on low-lying Fijan islands, or the environmental and cultural impacts of hordes of tourists on remote destinations such as Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes.
Unfortunately, the long tradition of field trips to foster learning about these challenges at the destination is no longer a viable option for two reasons. One is the obvious, but likely short-term, negative impact of Covid-19 on travel, while the longer-term reasons for these field trips being increasingly questionable are their negative environmental impacts, particularly in the context of Greenhouse Gas emissions.
As we say in NZ, ‘it’s not a good look’ to take a carbon-emitting flight to a low-lying Pacific Island so that we can learn about the devastating impacts of climate change.
In response, we need to fundamentally rethink how we offer experiential education that is situated in the appropriate cultural, political and environmental context. Although different pedagogical solutions can be developed, we favour the fostering of situated experiential education by harnessing virtual reality technology. We have explored the link between the experiential learning process on a real field trip and the learning environment offered by using gaming software and virtual reality headsets. Based on this work we developed a conceptualisation of a situated experiential education environment (SEEE) - Virtual reality and situated experiential education: A conceptualization and exploratory trial - and identified that gaming software and virtual reality can provide many of the features of a (real) situated experiential education environment. This means that situated experiential learning in the form of a Virtual Reality-based field trip to, for instance, Peru, is worth exploring.
With funding from the Latin America Centre for Asia Pacific Excellence (LatAm Cape), we developed a virtual reality learning tool based on the concept developed in the above JCAL paper to allow NZ secondary school students to virtually visit and learn about a community in an iconic tourist destination in South America.
The community of Machu Picchu Pueblo, also known as AguasCalientes, agreed to participate in this project. We developed the learning tool by digitally recreating the central area of the town and populating it with 180-degree video interviews of ten diverse stakeholders talking about life in the town, their aspirations for the year 2030 and the wide-reaching benefits and costs triggered by tourism at the foothills of the world-famous UNESCO World Heritage site.
In 2019 the learning tool was offered as a cutting-edge trial to three NZ secondary schools. It was run in full-immersion virtual reality with HTC Vive Pro headsets and motion tracking and used in a variety of learning contexts spanning value exploration, comparing the community’s challenges to those faced by NZ communities, through to the development of proposals to mitigate negative tourism impacts.
The 2019 trial was successful and served to understand what worked and what didn’t work from both the student's and teachers' perspectives. In addition to observational research about effectiveness, we conducted interviews with teachers and focus groups with students in order to understand the logistical implications for teachers and how the learning tool and learning experience could be refined.
The findings of this trial with the student, as well as the teacher perspective, have just been published in open access in this paper Immersive VR for K-12 experiential education – proposing a pedagogies, practicalities, and perspectives informed framework
See more details for this multi-award-winning project here: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/business/about/news/2020/sustainability-project-wins-gold-award-at-qs-wharton-reimagine-education-conference
Q. How does your work align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Can you provide specific examples of how your research contributes to achieving these goals?
A. My work generally engages with SDG4 Quality education (see VR learning tool above), SDGs 1 and 11 (see my highly cited 2021 research paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211973620301513 ) and SDG 13 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211973621001033 )
Q. As Chair of the UNPRME Steering Committee, what are your priorities for advancing responsible management education globally?
A. We are proud of our leading sustainability work across the university and the business schools’ membership of the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME). Our strong engagement with sustainability and the SDGs is reflected in our placing in the Top 100 universities in the world in Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2024.
As the first university in New Zealand’s North Island, we are launching a Bachelor of Commerce major in Sustainability and Ethics in Business, which builds on the success of our minor which we were running for several years. This is much much-needed addition to our triples crown accredited business school programme as both students and industry are looking for a deeper understanding of sustainability in a business context.
Q. How can universities like Victoria University of Wellington collaborate with industry partners to ensure that sustainability principles are integrated into business practices?
A. We have many collaborative projects and sponsorships. However, we also have consultancy projects integrated into our curriculum where students work on a hot topic with a different industry partner each year to solve sustainability challenges. These courses are very popular with students and successful from industry partner perspectives in terms of adding much-needed innovative ideas, multi-disciplinary knowledge, and youth perspectives. Sustainability is one of the core values we follow, and our efforts have also been recognized by the QS World Sustainability Rankings 2024 where Victoria University of Wellington is ranked 81st. In addition to this, all New Zealand universities are ranked #1 for sustainability stewardship in The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2024. This reflects our and all New Zealand universities’ commitment to continue driving awareness around sustainable initiatives by implementing them in the context of education.
Q. Victoria University of Wellington is renowned for its international outlook. How does the university attract and support international students, and what are the benefits of a diverse student body?
A. The University’s total student population consist of approx. 15% international students. A dedicated International Office and International Student Support Team make sure that international students are well supported throughout their journey, from the time of application to graduation and beyond. Orientation, Career Development, and Academic Mentoring are just a few services provided to our overseas students. Our International Office visits many countries regularly and we also have several staff based in the offshore market. Furthermore, we work with several trusted local partners who help students to navigate programmes, and visas, and prepare for departure. The University is proud to have great diversity within its international student population. Those students bring different languages, cultures, mentalities, approaches, and thoughts to our campuses and into our classrooms. Together with our domestic students, they create a dynamic and cosmopolitan environment for students and staff.
Q. Can you discuss the university's research strengths and collaborations with industry and government? How does this contribute to the university's global reputation?
A. Victoria University of Wellington is the capital university of New Zealand. One of our three campuses is located right across the road from New Zealand’s parliament and adjacent to ministries, government departments, the legal sector, and the corporate world of Wellington. The location, together with the approachable nature of the country’s leaders provides great opportunities to collaborate. The University’s programmes in politics and international studies are top in New Zealand and amongst the best globally.
