Under a new course on national and local essences, a group of first year IFTM students gained the chance to visit Macao Museum to get familiarised with the topic.
To better nurture talents for Macao – identified to be developing towards a centre, platform, and base – IFTM has opened a new subject, Studies on National Regime and Macao SAR, by refining and consolidating existing educational resources.
The Subject gives a comprehensive introduction to the history, culture, laws and governance systems of Macao, providing students with a solid foundation for understanding the socio-cultural and economic context in which the region’s economic activities take place.
In compliance with IFTM’s pedagogical philosophies of balancing between theory and practice as well as experience is the best teacher, a visitation to Macao Museum was arranged for the aforementioned students. The museum, meanwhile, is a capsule showcasing a multitude of relics of great historical value, which demonstrates the way of life and cultures of the various communities that have inhabited the City for centuries.
Several IFTM lecturers gathered and led over 200 students, specialised across disciplines of Hotel Management, Tourism Retail and Marketing Management, Tourism Event Management, and Cultural and Heritage Management, to the museum in four separate groups.
Docents at the museum offered in-depth explanations of each set, relic, and showcase, demonstrating the different stages of Macao in all dimensions, including its history and cultural characteristics.
Through the guided-tours and interactive question sections, the students got the chance to immerse themselves in scenes and scenarios that were only presented in textbooks or screen presentations. First and foremost, the visits allowed students gain literacy of the centuries of history of Macao, in terms of Sino-foreign exchanges, the Maritime Silk Road, and its religion and culture, and enhanced their sense of identity with the country and the City.
In addition, the visits gave students the opportunity to experience different aspects of traditions and popular arts of Macao in different times, such as people’s daily lives, entertainment, religious ceremonies and traditional festivals. A very impressive example is the special exhibition of ‘The Blessed Land – Belief and Customs of Tou Tei in Macao’, a religious ritual that was included in the fifth batch of the National List of Representative Elements of Intangible Cultural Heritage of China in 2021.
Post-visit queries discovered that teachers and students generally had very positive feelings about the visits, and many of the students were excited about the opportunities to apply and verify what they had learned in the classroom.
Given the success of this journey, the institute plans to gradually expand the “out-of-classroom” practice to the course’s “Law” and “Greater Bay Area” sections in the coming academic years. The various forms such as museum visits, guest lectures, and business site visits will be well integrated with course evaluations to polish the learning experiences and thus accentuate the outcomes of this Subject.
Hitherto, IFTM has organised a wide variety of outreach activities to enrich education for its students, including but not limited to exchange camp, excursions, external guest lectures, and visitations. The visit to Macao Museum is but one of the diverse ways IFTM students can acquire and activate knowledge.
