"<< Background >>The hospitality and tourism industry is a driver of employment and mobility across the EU. The Covid pandemic has caused an acute crisis in these sectors, a crisis that makes the need for innovation manifest. The consortium has sought, already before the crisis, to contribute to the innovative needs of hospitality and tourism by strengthening the inquisitive skills of their students, thus allowing them to anticipate future disruptions in their profession. They have addressed this need by adopting Design Oriented Research methods.The overall aim of THETA is therefore to prepare students and professionals for a changing profession through immersive real-life learning experiences. In addition to in-company research and learning (options that are currently scarcely available), the project seeks to offer these experiences in versatile, virtual contexts for real-life learning, using AR/VR enabled learning spaces. These spaces, accessible through multiple platforms, in particular mobile phones, will be used to share content and learning experiences at four of the European top-notch universities.Far more than just an emergency solution, these Digital Learning Spaces open up new opportunities for real-life learning through active learner engagement and situated learning, independent from time and place, emulating how professionals in the future will collaborate. It will allow faculty, students and practitioner stakeholders to discuss real-life case studies and to explore possible solutions in a way that is not always possible in in-company settings, either because a case context is unavailable or inaccessible at a certain location, or because experimental solutions cannot be explored in those settings. Finally, it will allow these stakeholders to discuss the same case studies at different institutes and across borders, thus allowing for transnational learning experiences and incorporating a cross-cultural perspective.BEFORE the project hospitality students have learned management skills and hospitality subjects in class rooms, where neither hotel rooms nor customers are present, without the possibility to experience the effects of managerial interventions. AFTER this project the students are able to put their managerial skills and strategic insight into practice, by experiencing the effect of their decisions in, for example, hotel room design in mixed reality educational spaces (a.k.a. “caves”), where all walls are screens or can be used as such via using projectors, making it easy to try out different alternatives, discuss and co-create them with educators, peers and end users, and present the resulting concepts to client companies and other stakeholders.<< Objectives >>Tertiary hospitality programmes prepare students for management and executive positions in an international context. The strategic competences required for these positions have evolved rapidly in the last two decades, mostly as a result of this volatility. The THETA partners respond to these changes by educating their students as ‘Field Problem Solvers’, applying Design Oriented Research Methods. Through this approach the partners of THETA seek to ensure that their education maintains its professional relevance, allowing for vertical mobility rather than creating a divide between the professional discourse and knowledge at operational and managerial levels. Thus, the THETA partners aim to help hospitality students and professionals, the target groups of this project, anticipate future changes in the hospitality business by strengthening the so-called “21st century” skills —inquisitive power and creativity— for the future challenges of their profession. This educational approach is under threat as real-life learning and in particular internship opportunities have been decimated. The innovation of transforming education to address volatility with ‘field problem solving’, is jeopardised by the sudden transition to distance/hybrid learning. The overall aim of THETA is to prepare students and professionals for a changing profession by offering versatile, virtual contexts for real-life case studies, using the AR/VR enabled learning spaces. These spaces, accessible through multiple platforms, in particular mobile phones, will be used to share content and learning experiences at four of the European top-notch universities. In order to achieve this, we will develop 4 intellectual outputs aimed at students and staff of tertiary hospitality management programmes.The specific objectives are to:-Create accessible digital facilities for real-life learning from a Design Oriented Research perspective-Prepare future professionals for a volatile and dynamic environment-Develop digital pedagogical competences of educators-Develop digital, entrepreneurial and autonomous learning competencies-Develop high quality digital content-Share the knowledge of leading hospitality institutions with other schools, while building their own knowledge base thereby strengthening their leadership role.<< Implementation >>THETA envisions the creation of Learning Spaces using Extended reality (XR) as an effective technology for active and experiential learning, enabling users to gain concrete experience that might not otherwise be available. By providing ""hands-on"" experience, XR helps promote student engagement with learning materials and deepens student interaction with complex problems. These Learning Spaces must be accessible and useable at institutes in different environments and to all students without requiring special equipment other than those in regular use, such as mobile phones or tablets.The project will also develop pilot learning experiences that showcase how these Digital Learning Spaces can be used to address field problems using the Design Oriented Research Cycle. Similarly, the research potential of the Digital Learning Spaces will be illustrated by the development of a pilot research study where they will be used to test and assess simulated consumer experiences. Finally, an instructor resource package will be developed that will allow faculty at consortium partners as well as colleagues from other institutes and industry stakeholders to use not only the pilot materials, but also to use the experiences of the project to develop further courses and case studies.THETA will lead to 4 intellectual outputs:• IO1: AR/VR enabled Learning Spaces• IO2: Courses that make use of these spaces; in particular, a course on the use of Design Oriented Research that is to be followed by students of the participating schools, and potentially in the future by external students.• IO3: Research to be conducted making use of these spaces; the project envisions to create a pilot study around user preferences in sustainable hotel room measures;• IO4: Manual and training for faculty on creating Digital Learning Spaces and embedding Digital Learning Spaces in education.The XR (AR/VR) solutions will be implemented in each of the consortium partners to ameliorate student learning.As part of the project, we will organise one Learning, Teaching and Training activity as well as four Multiplier Events.<< Results >>Outcomes and impact THETA will have a clear impact on the different target groups of the project. The overall goal of THETA is to enhance the skill set of future graduates in hospitality management, widening the scope of the curriculum from current discipline knowledge and managerial skills to incorporate ‘21st century skills’, in particular those focusing on detecting and analysing new developments and trends, and on designing, implementing and critically assessing response strategies. In order to widen access to tertiary hospitality management programmes with Design Oriented Research as their ‘epistemological backbone’, digital AR/VR enabled learning spaces are developed. These spaces offer not just a temporary solution for a crisis situation, but a sustainable incorporation of digital learning, research and exchange into the activities of the partners.The specific path to achieve this ambitious goal is to develop world class online/blended learning that engages hospitality faculty, students and practitioners to address professional issues using a Design Oriented Management methodology. By creating a versatile virtual facility, they learn to analyse and solve emergent issues in the current and future professional environment of strategic hospitality management, in order to prepare participants as research informed problem solvers and innovators for the hospitality industry and society following the Design Oriented Research problem solving cycle."