Journal of Food Science Education最新文献

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models. By Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann. 2019. Penguin Random House LLC, 978–0525533580, 352 pages

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book. I was thinking it would be a book on cognitive psychology and how learning works according to various theories. That was certainly not the topic of this book! Instead, the book is a whirlwind tour through the mental models, or basically cognitive shortcuts, that people use (sometimes without realizing it) in everyday life.

Weinberg and McCann organize the models into nine different chapters, with an additional introduction chapter explaining the themes and organization of the book and a concluding chapter wrapping up the key points of the book. The model chapters cover a variety of topics, including making decisions, resolving conflicts, being wrong, statistics (and how bad people are at understanding them), time management, and organizational behavior. Each chapter had a key takeaway section at the end that summarizes the most important mental models discussed in that chapter. This takeaway section is a great quick reference when you half-remember what was discussed in the chapter but can't recall the name of the model or need a short description of what one of the models is about.

This book is great for anyone who would like an overview of mental models, or who wants to organize their knowledge of mental models. However, there is not a lot of detail about the models. This is quite understandable, as there are hundreds presented in the book! For readers wanting more detail on the models, the authors mention multiple noteworthy model developers, as well as some studies using some of the models. At the very least, if I want to find out more about any model, I now have the appropriate term to plug into a scientific search engine.

The book is written more for someone in the business world rather than the academic world. Still, most, if not all, of the models are highly applicable in the classroom and/or the academic research lab. It just takes a bit of creative thinking to see the applications. For example, the vast majority of students (and faculty) would benefit from the chapter on time management, which covers mental models such as multitasking, opportunity cost, diminishing returns, loss aversion, reframing the problem, and the Pareto principle. Imagine discussing these models with students in terms of assignments. They can use the Pareto principle to figure out what part of an assignment is most important and get them closest to finishing the assignment with the least amount of time commitment. They should not try to multitask when doing the assignment, because they won't be able to focus well and therefore won't do as good a job as if they had focused only on the assignment. Reframing the problem, or looking at the assignment from different perspectives, may help them see new ways to complete it. And understanding

The shock of a very poor teaching evaluation in my first year of teaching food engineering to food science students at the University of Kentucky caused me to re-evaluate my approach to teaching. Discussions with my colleagues across the country at other U.S. universities, who teach the same course, made me realize that my experience is not peculiar to me or my university. In the next 4 years, I introduced several changes to the course that made me feel that I might have cracked some kind of code for teaching food engineering because my teaching evaluation improved by almost 40% over the last 2 years. Beyond my course evaluations, there is tangible evidence that student satisfaction at the end of the course has improved. I now receive complimentary comments instead of a sigh of relief that many students expressed previously, and some have commented in their other food science courses that my class was really helpful to them in understanding some other aspect of food science. In this letter to the editor, I attempted to share my experience.

Food engineering is a compulsory course for all food science students in all Institute of Food Technology (IFT) approved food science programs. Professors who teach food engineering to food science students are faced with the difficult task of making the course amenable to the students who seem to dislike any course with substantial mathematics and physics content. As a new faculty in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering at the University of Kentucky, one of my primary responsibilities is to teach food engineering to our food science students. This letter summarizes my experience over the last 5 years. The course was poorly perceived by students in my first year of teaching, but numerous changes resulted in overwhelmingly positive responses in my fourth and fifth year. A quick point to note is that this problem has some historical perspective. It is a generational problem that substantial efforts have been made by colleagues across the United States and beyond to tackle and address (e.g., Gulati & Datta, 2013; Hartel & Adem, 2004; Singh, 2015). A lot of the interventions introduced include computer-aided food engineering, mathematics intervention, course demonstration on key topics in short videos, animation of some key food engineering concepts, and the development of virtual laboratory (Gulati & Datta, 2013; Hartel & Adem, 2004; Niranjan, 2016; Saguy, 2016; Singh, 2015). These efforts have yielded some improvements in programs where they have been implemented like mine. However, my experience, which is shared by many of my colleagues who currently teach food engineering to food science students, indicates that we still have more ground to cover. This letter and the supplementary exposé paper are intended to spark a further discussion on what else we need to do b

Food science-based graduates are a significant proportion of the United Kingdom (UK) food and drink industry's workforce. Aside from technical standards, there is no cohesive competency framework to support key stakeholders; employers, students, and degree providers. Clarity of desirable competencies for the range of graduate opportunities available would enable students to undertake effective career planning and personal development, and educators to refine programs to satisfy market needs. Using a previously developed language tool, a Likert style, industry-wide online survey in UK and Republic of Ireland (ROI) was conducted involving 218 participants from a broad range of food science-related employment areas, evaluated by a combination of descriptive and multivariate data analysis. The survey outcomes indicate types of desirable competencies in a food science graduate. The tailored competency framework, Competencies for Food Graduate Careers (CFGC), is a set of 48 elements across eight themes, outlining which are desirable for each of 14 typical initial graduate roles. To enhance the quality of “oven-ready” graduates entering the food industry, it is recommended CFGC be used for careers education and competency development in higher education. The framework is aimed to have further applications for job specification development and also to improve awareness of careers in the food industry.

Why They Can't Write. By John Warner. 2018. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN: 978-1-421-42711-7

“They just can't write!” It's a common faculty complaint: students don't seem to be able to coherently express their thoughts in writing. But while there is a considerable amount of faculty distress over students’ poor writing abilities (not to mention anxiety from students about their grades on any writing assignment), and a general consensus that the problem lies somewhere in K-12 education, faculty generally are unsure of how to help students improve their writing.

In his book Why They Can't Write, John Warner discusses the reasons students don't write well and what can be done to improve their writing. An instructor of writing for twenty years at multiple universities, Warner has developed a solid framework for addressing the root cause of student writing troubles and helping them develop as writers.

So why can't they write? Interestingly, it's not mobile devices, lack of instructional rigor, bad instruction, or lazy students. Instead, Warner writes, it's because we focus too much on teaching students how to write “properly”, that is, in a standard format. Remember the five-paragraph essay? This is the primary format for writing instruction in current K-12 education. For those of you who were fortunate enough to escape learning that particular writing format, the five-paragraph essay comprises an introductory paragraph, three paragraphs of explanation or idea development, and a concluding paragraph that generally starts with “In conclusion, …”. On top of that, each paragraph must be three to five sentences long and each sentence needs to be five to nine words. It's an extremely restrictive format that does not lend itself well to either scientific or creating writing.

If this format is so bad, then why do we still use it? The reason, Warner explains, is standardized testing. For example, the scorers for the writing section of the SAT had a maximum of three minutes to grade each essay. While the SAT no longer includes a writing section, other standardized writing tests are scored similarly. Additionally, students are often informed (or figure out) that accuracy of content takes second place to polysyllabic words and imposing-sounding phrasing. After all, if someone is frantically skimming an essay so they can meet their quota (yes, there are quotas for scorers), they don't have time to parse out the actual meaning of that flowery sentence and will likely score the essay well based on vocabulary.

Warner also notes that there are other problems in writing education that are general problems in our current educational system. These issues include an increase in student surveillance, constant pursuance of educational fads that lack supporting research, the perception of technology as a panacea for all educational woes, and proliferation of standardized testing. Together, these issues result in pr

Take a few minutes and think back to a time when you realized you were wrong about something. What feelings came to mind as you recalled this memory? Most people associate negative and/or unpleasant feelings with being wrong1, using words like dreadful, thumbs down, and embarrassing (Schulz, 2011). According to “wrongologist” Kathryn Schulz, we learn at quite an early age that being wrong is a bad thing and that we should avoid it at all costs. And if you find yourself in the wrong about something, then you're better off keeping your mistake to yourself. But is our negative attitude and outlook about being wrong the most beneficial approach? Not according to Schulz, as well as mounting evidence from a number of other researchers (for example, Metcalfe, 2017; Tulis, Steuer, & Dresel, 2016).

Another, more experiential, source of evidence comes from famous people who learned from their mistakes (Sugar, Feloni, & Lutz, 2015). Take Walt Disney for example. Walt was fired from his Kansas City Star newspaper job early in his career because his editor said he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas,” that is to say, he wasn't creative enough (Sugar, Feloni, & Lutz, 2015). His first animation company quickly went broke and when he tried to get MGM studios to distribute Mickey Mouse in 1927, he was told that the idea would never work because a giant mouse on the screen would terrify women (Schochet, 2010). All I can say is, I am sure Mickey (and Minnie) would argue otherwise! Walt Disney learned from his mistakes, pressing on to not only build an extremely vast and successful empire, but to capture the hearts of young and old alike with his amazing and creative animations, which still live on today!

In her book “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error,” Schulz (2010) proposes a new way of looking at wrongness. She argues that, of all the things we humans are wrong about, our ideas about error are probably our “meta-mistake: we are wrong about what it means to be wrong.” Being wrong is “far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority”; in actuality, “the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition" and “is a vital part of how we learn and change.” In this light, error is both a given (we will make errors) and a gift (we can learn from them) – being wrong can transform our ideas about the world in which we live, our relationships, and, most profoundly, our understanding of ourselves (Anonymous, 2010).

I first came across Schulz's TED talk (2011) on wrongness in an article by Goodin (2012) entitled, “What is the Secret Behind Successful Students?” What first caught my attention about this article was the quote, located under the picture of an old treasure chest, that opens the article: “When you dig a little deeper into the student experience, you realize many of them are mindlessly dri

A globalized world requires research to transcend geographical boundaries; this includes training students in international collaborative research. The purpose of this project was to identify the benefits, opportunities, and challenges of students from two universities (Kansas State Univ. and Tallin Univ. of Technology) working on an international research project together. For this purpose, six graduate students from the Center for Sensory Analysis and Consumer Behavior, Kansas State Univ., partnered with 20 Food Science major students from a Product Development class at Tallinn Univ. of Technology. Students worked together by distance in a partnership developing a rye bread sensory lexicon for systematically understanding the sensory properties of this product category, conducting Landscape analysis by using sensory mapping techniques on rye bread products from Northeast Europe for capturing the market complexity and to identify opportunity for new product development and new products concepts. Students from Kansas then went to Estonia for further meetings. After the trip, students and professors were asked for their feedback. Results showed that students identify learning food trends from another country as the main benefit of their international collaboration, followed by intercultural skills and knowledge transfer. Language and difference in time zones, as well as educational backgrounds, were identified by students as the main challenges of the collaboration. When US students were asked to rate the learning outcomes stated in the syllabus, understanding the cultural characteristics of Estonia was the one scored highest. Professors mentioned this opportunity is unique because it gives a cultural component programs usually not only an offer and a chance to develop time management skills by working across divergent time zones, but also to practice options for managing language barriers. This project shows that it is possible to setup a partnership between students across different countries and have a positive outcome that includes unique learning experiences for students; especially in terms of time and project management.

As I teach, I have gotten into the habit of walking around the classroom. In part, my habit of strolling around the room was developed out of necessity, as I began to teach larger and larger enrollment classes. Walking around the classroom became one of my tried and true good classroom management practices. By walking around the room, I was “working the crowd” so-to-speak. In educational terminology, I was employing the concept of zones of proximity (Jones, 2007) or proximity control (Catapano, n.d.); that is, using my physical presence to get students to pay attention, response to a question, decrease a student's feeling of anonymity, or, if need be, dissuade someone from being disruptive. My close proximity naturally caused my students to focus and often times participate! In most cases, it works like a charm!

Now this practice of walking around the room also led to something else—it allowed me to observe the notes my students were taking during class. I must admit, I was surprised and somewhat shocked at the exceedingly wide variation in quantity (from none to a lot), quality (from poor to excellent), and format (mostly just words, phrases, and/or sentences, but some contained diagrams and a few even used color coding) of the notes my students were taking. This experience, as well as many others like it, has caused me to want to learn more about the task of note taking. This quest has led me to start each semester with some words of encouragement to my students about the importance of taking sufficient, good quality notes while the learning experience is happening.

Since note taking is such a routine and “just expected” aspect of schooling,1 it may be easy to take it for granted (that is, everyone knows how to take notes) and view it as a rather effortless task (that is, just write the important stuff down). However, in actuality, note taking, if done effectively, is a very demanding task, requiring both skill and a great deal of effort! As expressed by Piolat, Olive, and Kellogg (2005), “Note taking is a complex activity that requires comprehension and selection of information and written production processes.” Selecting key points and recording them while comprehending new information, all at the same time, presents sizeable demands on the central executive and other components of working memory. To put the effort required of note taking into perspective, Piolat et al. (2005) go on to say, “Comparative data show that note taking demands more effort than reading or learning. However, it requires less effort than the creative written composition of an original text.” It is, in fact, the effort behind note taking that has been tied to improved student learning. As discussed by Gonzalez (2018), “Rather than passively taking information in, the act of encoding the information into words or pictures forms new pathways in the brain, which stores it more firmly in long-term memory. O

Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. By James M. Lang. 2016. Jossey-Bass. ISBN: 978-1118944493

I have read multiple books about teaching that are amazing, inspiring, and thought provoking…and make me feel like I need to do a major course overhaul to implement the concepts and suggestions provided. Even if these concepts and suggestions are backed up by a bibliography that takes up one-third of the book's page count, it is still discouraging to realize that I have to wait sometimes months to make changes. And then my initial enthusiasm starts to wear off over time as the semester progresses, my students do all right in my current course setup. Not to mention that I remember that summer, the best time for me to do this major course overhaul, is also when major grant cycles hit, the food science conference season ramps up, and a number of other tasks pop up. And then it is August, the semester is about to start, and I realize that all of these splendid course changes I was planning have to wait until I have more time to do something about them.

This book is different. This book lets you make changes to your course right now, even if you are super-busy, even if you have two weeks left in the semester, and even if your classes are so full of content that you have no idea how to fit anything else in.

Most books on teaching strategies focus on large teaching, or big changes you should make to your course that are generally supported by at least some literature. Small teaching, on the other hand, are small changes or quick activities that you can incorporate into any course to boost student learning. Lang compares teaching to baseball, which is where the “small” and “large” terms are derived. “Small ball” is a focus on just moving forward, getting runners on base, moving ahead one base at a time. It is not as flashy and exciting as someone hitting a grand slam, but it works. The same goes for teaching. Small teaching does not require an entire course overhaul, but it is effective in boosting student learning.

Lang divides the book into three main parts. The first part focuses on boosting student knowledge of course content and discusses retrieval of knowledge already learned, prediction of what will happen in a scenario, and immediately seeing if that prediction was accurate. It also covers interleaving concepts and skills, which involves presenting application problems or conceptual questions in a random order rather than the order in which a student learned the material. In the second part of the book, Lang discusses student understanding of the material. This involves having the students connect seemingly disparate pieces of knowledge into a cohesive whole, practicing their new knowledge and skills to build their fluency and mastery, and explaining course concepts in their own words to themselves and their peers. Lang focuses on inspiration of both students and instructors in the third

Traditionally, cognition and emotion were believed to be independent systems; however, research in the cognitive and neurobiological sciences has shown that the relationship between cognition and emotion is both interdependent and extensive. This intimate connection between emotion and cognition is leading to a number of insights that have the potential to inform and transform educational practices at all levels—from the classroom to the curriculum to educational policy. The question that has been on my mind (and on my heart) is, as a teacher, how can I both embrace and harness the power of emotion to help my students’ learning be more meaningful, useful, and intrinsically motivated? In this article, I would like to share with you some of the effective practices that I have implemented in my classroom and how I have worked to intentionally embed the emotional aspect of learning into the framework of the courses I teach.

Marching Off the Map. Poet Gardener Publishing. By Tim Elmore with Andrew McPeak. 2017. (in association with Growing Leaders, Inc.). ISBN: 978-0-9966970-6-4

“Kids these days.” Pretty much every generation that has ever existed has complained that the generation before them does not understand them and the generation after them is a bunch of hopeless, entitled layabouts. And we are really good at slapping labels on generations or lumping them into stereotypical behaviors. Boomers are bad at technology. Gen Xers are the sandwich generation. Millennials are entitled and lazy. Gen Zers are digital natives.

At first glance, the beginning of Marching Off the Map seems to start in this vein: it covers key similarities of people in Generation Z, the generation of students starting college as of 2018. According to the main author, Tim Elmore, these students are anxious and stressed, want to make a difference in the world, are very good at getting information (but not necessarily at evaluating or synthesizing it), use technology to disengage with real life, and tend to be skeptical, but childish. Although all of us can point to someone born in Gen Z that does not fit this profile, Elmore uses this list of characteristics as a basis for the key point of the book.

Here it is: our current education methods, particularly those used in K-12 education, are not effective. They do not engage students and they do not help students understand the relevance or real-world application of what they are learning. Overall, commonly used strategies, such as lectures and multiple-choice testing, are not effective at helping students learn and evaluating their learning, respectively. Moreover, Elmore states, they are not helping equip students to enter the workforce career ready. Many students are deficient in critical thinking and problem-solving skills. They can find information easily, but do not know how to critically review it for accuracy and bias. They have little resilience and persistence in the face of hardship. These problems, Elmore says, are a by-product of both our culture and our educational system. Parents are too busy, detached (e.g., on Facebook all evening), or overprotective to teach children these skills, and the K-12 educational system is so focused on performance and results that it promotes memorization rather than deep thinking and learning.

All of us have likely run into the problems described, whether it was with our students, our own children, or both. So how do we address the problem of students who are underprepared to think and learn in the real world?

This is where the title of the book comes in. The “map,” Elmore says, is the pattern of things we have done before. Just like mapmakers in previous centuries had to leave the old maps behind and create new maps as they explored new territories, we as educators, mentors, and coaches of students have to let go of outdated educational methods and create