Introductory Course for VET Students
In the tourism sector, many everyday tools have already fully integrated AI, often without this being declared or noticed. AI is used to generate descriptive text, automatic replies, and the ranking of search results. Knowing how these tools work, where they can go wrong, and how to use them thoughtfully is an increasingly relevant skill in the labour market and in life.
The five lessons of this course start from the fundamentals and guide you through these tools, setting out what they can and cannot do, how to get useful results from them and how to evaluate those results. Throughout, one thing holds: the person, with their intelligence, creativity and critical judgement, is and must remain central.
Who it is for
The course is written for VET students in tourism and hospitality, and for anyone who wants to explore the subject and understand how it works, free of preconceptions, negative or positive. No technical background is needed to follow it: if you have used a search engine and a messaging app, you already have what you need to begin.
The five lessons
1. AI and Machine Learning: the fundamentals
What AI is, what machine learning does, and how to recognise both in the tools you already use every day.
2. Understanding the generative AI model and its capabilities
What generative AI is; how it differs from non-generative models; how it uses data and what it can generate: text, images, audio, video, and synthetic data.
3. Prompt engineering: the art of guiding AI
What a “prompt” is; how to use the technique to get the results you are after; how to improve it.
4. Generative AI in action
Real applications in tourism and hospitality: personalised itineraries, marketing content, chatbots, guest feedback analysis; and strategies for judging the tools available today and the ones still to come.
5. AI ethics and critical thinking
The principles of responsible AI use; bias, hallucinations and deepfakes; a checklist for evaluating AI-generated content before publishing it; the environmental footprint of AI; changes in working life and in private life.
How it works
The course is designed to be followed online: you can work through the lessons in sequence or explore the topics that interest you most. No installation or registration is required: you can open any of the five lessons and start reading.
Each lesson alternates short explanations with exercises, and closes with a summary of the key points, reflections that connect it to your studies and your future work, and a test.
Some exercises come with solutions and comments. Others are open, conceived to prompt comparison and discussion.
Registering is optional, but it allows you to earn an Open Badge, a digital credential that strengthens your CV.
The lessons are also available as PDFs, so that you can study offline. The files are tagged for screen readers and designed to be read on screen: we encourage you to avoid printing them.
For educators
The lessons are interconnected but independent, and individual topics can be presented separately, in single working sessions.
The solutions to the closed-answer exercises appear at the end of each exercise and are available to students: they explain the reasoning and are an opportunity for classroom debate. The open exercises will produce different answers every time, shaped by the students themselves.
The course is an open educational resource (OER): you are free to use it. Written for VET students, the material adapts to other settings, including non-formal and informal learning.
In class, you can work from the same material as PDFs, with no need for a connection. The project also includes a guidance kit for educators, with suggestions for planning classroom sessions. Finally, the course includes a section dedicated to “words”: a Glossary that offers a closer look at the meaning of some of the recurring terms and expressions we used when we refer to AI. The terms have been chosen for their power to spark independent reflection and classroom debate. Each entry includes a definition and a section that takes it further. Some entries are also enriched with external resources to encourage further exploration. You can find it at: https://divetour2learning.eu/glossary/
Nexus City
Nexus City is the educational role-playing game built alongside the course. You will find a full description of the game, the instructions, and some printable materials at https://divetour2learning.eu/the-game/.
Important: you can navigate the lessons freely, but to get the OpenBadge and certify your course completion, you must be registered on the platform and logged in. To create a profile, click “Create your Profile”.
Select the lesson below and start learning
We have prepared a downloadable PDF version of the lessons for those who prefer it.