Pandemic Impact on the Travels and Tourism Sector of Nepal

The travel and tours enterprise were badly affected due to pandemics. In the aftermath of high restrictions on human movement, travel-based entrepreneurs were highly impacted due to lockdown. Due to pandemic, highly impacted into earning-saving, lack of supportive working conditions, lower self-capacity, and lack of recovery budget and policies, the travel and tours-based entrepreneurs were highly impacted. The study reflected the impact of pandemics on travel and tours, major constraints, and a possible way forward to sustaining. The research explores what are the major existing practices of sustaining travel and tours entrepreneurs during pandemics, what factors can contribute to building bounce-back capacities of travel and tours entrepreneurs’ sustainability. Above forty-four, snowball-based sampling was done from major travel and tours entrepreneurs, Pokhara-Nepal. A structure-based open-ended questionnaire, key informant interviews, and in-person-based discussion were applied in the method of study. Used the content analysis along with a recap of the research question, undertake bracketing to identify biases, operationalize variables with develop a coding, and code the data with undertaking analysis while qualitative analysis, and multiple regression facilitated on quantitative analysis to finalize the discussion. The study reflects that self-saving, social support, state and financial institutions recovery support, social behavior and change communication, full vaccination practices, and self-accountable tourist behavior are highly expectable conditions to the sustainability of travel and torus entrepreneurship in the learning area. The study concludes that self-saving capacity can contribute to bounce-back capacity for every entrepreneur. Social support and socioeconomic recovery packages were also contributing to sustaining travel and tours in the study area. Self-saving condition and capacity is higher bounce back capacity compared to non-saved entrepreneurs in the study area. Social support, socioeconomic recovery practices, and recovery packages from state and financial institutions were not at the higher level as expected.

Impact of Hands-On Activities on Students’ Motivation and Achievement in Science

We are living in the era of science and technology and it has made the world a global village. Science and technology has become a prominent indicator of economic development and prosperity. Nations of the world are striving for the excellence in this field. Pakistan is a developing country and advancement in the field of science and technology is the only way that can embark upon an era of economic development and prosperity for the country. Advancement in science and technology requires revolutionary changes and improvements in teaching learning science at all levels. One of the desired changes is the use of hands-on activities in teaching and learning science. Students’ involvement in hands-on activities exposes them to vibrant connections from abstract concepts to material examples and from scientific principles to scientific applications, which contribute a lot to students’ better comprehension of the scientific knowledge and their ability to solve problems using their scientific knowledge. It has been found that hands-on activities provide enjoyment to children and develop greater enthusiasm for science in the classroom. Keeping in view the need and importance hands-on activities in science education, the present study was undertaken. This study was designed to investigate the impact of hands-on activities on 8th grade students’ motivation toward science learning and their achievement in science. The study was conducted on 342 students of two boys’ high schools and two girls’ high schools, all schools were from public sector. The sample of the study comprised of 145 male and 197 female of grade 8, of which 169(49%) were assigned as experimental group and instructed by hands-on activities, while the 173 (51%) were assigned as control group and instructed by the viii traditional method. For the study, students’ motivation toward science learning scale (SMTSL) was used to measure students’ motivation toward science learning and science achievement test developed and validated by the researcher, was used to collect the data regarding students achievement score in science. The data were analyzed by using Independent Sample t-test through SPSS. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between the means score on students’ motivation toward science learning and students’ science achievement in favour of the experimental group. Gender wise comparison showed that male students were higher on motivation toward science learning as a result of experiencing hands-on activities but the difference was small and insignificant. Moreover, the gender wise comparison on achievement score as a result of experiencing hands-on activities showed that hands-on activities are equally beneficial for both male and female students and no difference on science achievement was found therein. The results of this study are important in the context of developing countries that have limited resources to spend on science education. The study recommends that science curriculum should be more activity based and include more hands- on activities at this level and teachers should be trained effectively so that the students’ motivational level toward science learning and their achievement in science can be enhanced.