Vikki Schaffer

What key attributes make a graduate career-ready? This chapter delves into immersive learning as a critical methodology for supporting career readiness. Immersive learning is characterized by direct workplace, laboratory, or field engagement. It is an effective approach to cultivate these attributes. Through practical examples, we illustrate how immersive experiences can bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, thereby enhancing the readiness of graduates for professional challenges. Examining recent practices and educational doctrines to envisage the future of STEM education, the focus is on reimagining STEM learning pathways to better align with industry needs and support graduates' adaptation to the rapidly changing professional landscape. Significant shifts in educational strategies are essential to achieve this goal. These shifts should prioritize experiential learning, adaptability, and deeper industry-academia collaboration. Concluding, we posit that to meet the dynamic demands of the modern workforce, a re-evaluation of current educational practices is imperative. We advocate for large-scale changes in preparing graduates, emphasizing the importance of immersive learning experiences and a forward-thinking approach to STEM education. This will ensure that future graduates are well-equipped to navigate and thrive in an ever-evolving industry environment.

Emotion is a key cognitive process that is central to being human. This chapter discusses various psychological approaches to understand emotions and introduces cognitive appraisal theory and its appraisal dimensions. By reviewing recent studies on emotions, this chapter recognises the theory as one of the most promising ones to advance research on emotions. The significance of appraisal theory for tourism is in the ability to explain why the same stimulus can generate different emotions in different people or in the same person at different times. Cognitive appraisal theory is able to assist in the prediction of emotions and subsequent behaviour. This chapter concludes by outlining potential topics where the theory can be particularly useful in tourism.

Awe is a multidimensional emotional experience that has the potential to adjust one's beliefs and schema. Vastness is the core cognitive appraisal required to elicit awe. An appraisal of vastness can challenge an individual's present frame of reference. The cognitive process, need for accommodation, can be activated by the appraisal of vastness. Both an appraisal of vastness and the need for cognitive accommodation are essential to experiencing awe. This chapter presents an overview of the rapidly emerging research on awe through a cognitive appraisal lens. It highlights the importance of immersive experiences and nature contexts within tourism, illustrated by examining immersive, marine tourism activities on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. The case study discusses tourists' experiences of engaging scuba diving, swimming with whales, whale watching, and the elicitation and experience of awe and associated cognition.

This book introduces a range of citizen science approaches to the coastal and marine sciences, introducing a variety of case studies. It goes beyond the narrow definition of citizen science, and also includes the contributions to science provided by the wider tourism industry. Various methods are discussed, including traditional surveys, the use of social media and GPS tracking as sources for data, and citizen science contributions through online platforms and apps, as well as tour operator sighting logs. [Book Synopsis]