Service-Learning Courses: Facilitating Experiential Learning

Food insecurity, Experiential Learning, Important-performance analysis

The present study attempts to identify students’ perceptions of the importance of the experiential learning elements compared to their performance. As a case of experiential learning program, a capstone restaurant management course that addresses community food insecurity issues was selected for this study because of its popularity and efficiency for facilitating service-learning experiences at the university level. Importance-performance analysis (IPA) was employed to identify respondents’ perceptual mapping in terms of experiential learning elements in restaurant management education. The primary results reveal that respondents perceived most of the practical skills and interpersonal skills as high in performance and importance. This study offers some significant insights into the potential application of experiential learning elements, enabling hospitality educators to better understand how undergraduate students view the educational elements of experiential learning