Journal of Food Science Education最新文献

Engaging undergraduate students in research has become increasingly important due to its potential benefits (for example, increased intention to pursue postgraduate study and enhanced understanding of theoretical knowledge). This study investigated whether a comprehensive food science research project that was incorporated into the laboratory component of an Experimental Study of Foods course would enhance student knowledge, confidence, and interest in research. A total of 84 students participated in two sections of the laboratory (2016, n = 39; 2017, n = 45). Scores for pre and posttests and questionnaires were used to determine if the differences in knowledge scores and ratings for confidence in doing research were significant. Knowledge scores indicated that participants were knowledgeable about research at baseline (2016, 7.31 ± 1.15; 2017, 6.89 ± 0.1.21; maximum of 10 points). Results of the t-tests showed that the change in knowledge scores before and after the project was not statistically significant; however, the level of confidence in performing various research skills (for example, identify research questions, formulate hypotheses, design an experiment) significantly increased upon project completion. In general, students demonstrated favorable attitudes toward the research project at the end of this project. Qualitative responses were organized into three themes that related to the “input” (elements that made the project successful), “process” (how the project was conducted), and “outcomes” (reported gains or benefits) of the project. Recommendations were made in terms of mentorship, research guidelines and topics, and group culture to improve future projects.

This laboratory activity was designed to strengthen our Food and Nutritional Science students’ knowledge of biochemistry concepts and the relationship between these concepts and food science. The result was a laboratory experience in which biochemistry concepts are taught using yogurt as a model, in order to link those concepts to food safety, an important area of food science. The students employed a colorimetric method to measure the lactase activity of bacterial strains found in commercial yogurts and were encouraged to relate the activity to bacterial lactic acid production, fermentation, and food safety. Students were assessed with pre- and post-test exams, laboratory reports, class performance rubrics, and the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI). The result demonstrated that the students successfully completed the learning objectives and were motivated during the activity. This exercise could be used as a template for a simplified and engaging way to introduce food science majors, as well as other students, to complex biochemistry and molecular biology concepts using food, particularly yogurt, as a model.

I have a new opportunity this Fall semester to teach a course for beginning Food Science majors. It's not a food science content course per se, but rather an introductory course for students in Food Science focused on student learning and success, current issues, and opportunities and careers in the field of Food Science. Teaching this type of class is a bit new to me, so my first step was to start searching for ideas and resources from people who were already teaching a similar course. In my search I found a gold mine—a book titled “The Art of Preparing for a Career” by Dr. Tim Elmore (2015). The book is one of a series of books utilizing Habitudes. What are Habitudes, you ask? As articulated on the Growing Leaders, Inc., website (2018): “Habitudes…combines images, relatable stories, and experiences into leadership development curriculum and lesson plans that resonate with today's young adults, equipping them to navigate through life's challenges and opportunities.” Just what I was looking for—a timely tool to help my students intentionally and successfully navigate the challenges and opportunities that lie in front of them as they begin their journey from backpack to briefcase1!

Before diving into the nuts and bolts of what it means to be career ready, Dr. Elmore straightforwardly addresses the question, “Why is getting ready so important?” The bottom line answer: many students graduating from college are not prepared to succeed in their careers. According to survey data collected between 2012 and 2014 by Millennial Branding and Beyond.com, “between 50 to 78 percent of employers who had job openings did not hire recent graduates simply because they weren't prepared for the job. In short, the jobs were ready, but the graduates weren't” (p. ii). It's time to change those statistics and guide our students to career readiness!

To get the full scoop, you'll have to get yourself a copy of the “The Art of Preparing for a Career”; however, I want to share with you a brief overview of the book and a few of its special features, as well as how I plan to use the contents of the book in my course this semester.

Dr. Elmore's book contains 13 chapters, where each chapter is anchored by an image. The image is of key importance, as explained at the beginning of the book (p. i), “Because pictures stick. We remember pictures long after words have left us.” The goal is for the images to linger in the mind and heart and produce a profound impact. An example of one of the images, entitled “Kitchens and Restaurants,” is a picture of food being prepared in the home. The brief message associated with this image reads: “Kitchens and restaurants are both about preparing good food. The difference? In a restaurant, you sit, and someone brings the food to you. In a kitchen, you read the recipe and make the food yourself. Knowledge isn't enough. Academic and technical skills should complement each other. Information must

My teaching philosophy has evolved throughout the years, but the saying by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher who is considered as one of the greatest mentors with many disciples, has remained as the header, guiding my teaching and learning philosophy. Approximately 2,500 years ago, Confucius eloquently phrased what I believe to be the essence of teaching and learning, which describes a teacher as a guide who lights the path to learning, so that the students are able to independently accomplish a successful journey that is full of self-learning experiences. This is aligned with the widely known adage, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” As a teacher, I have always strived to teach my students how to learn as much as what to learn, so as to encourage them to become life-long, expert learners.

A few years ago, I made a huge decision to completely flip my undergraduate course, Sensory Evaluation of Foods, which is required for our undergraduate Food Science students and is typically taken during their junior year. This was a questionable move because flipping the course would involve significant time and effort for a course that already had a successful record of receiving outstanding student ratings. However, I marched forward with the plan and even secured funding supported from the Provost Office to enhance the course. I had taught the course for more than ten years prior and had a desire to transform the course to encourage more student-directed learning. The prior course, comprised of lectures, in-class discussions, microthemes (Schmidt, Parmer, & Javenkoski, 2002), laboratory sessions, a group project, and an oral presentation, was deemed full of active learning opportunities. However, there was a sense of the course being fully orchestrated by the instructor, myself, rather than the students directing their learning. The push for this endeavor stemmed from the belief that flipping the class would enable full implementation of my core teaching philosophy, to make my students great fishermen (expert learners).

The flipped classroom is a form of blended learning (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004), where traditional lecture materials are provided to the student for learning outside of the classroom time, so that the classroom time can be devoted to group work and active discussion for problem-solving activities (Herreid & Schiller, 2013; Tucker, 2012). The structure of my flipped course was based on replacing approximately 1/3 of my lecture materials with in-class group project time. The replaced portions of the lectures were housed online, allowing the students to have flexible, 24/7 access. The online lectures were created by the teaching assistants (TAs) supported by the funds from the Provost Office, which allowed me to have time to focus on reorganizing the entire flow of the course. This

A 4-week mini-project is proposed for an experimental Physical Chemistry course applied in Food Science training. Activities include preparation of beet extract for the extraction of betanins and analysis of the kinetics of betanins in thermal degradation at three temperatures (60, 70, and 80 ºC). In addition to developing common laboratory routines (for example, dilution and use of the UV-Vis spectrophotometer), students will have contact with the usual procedure for evaluating use of natural dyes in the food industry.

Understanding the role of food science education in developing undergraduate students’ intentions to implement Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) may be a key strategy in developing the workforce's implementation of GMPs and other food safety programs. Previous research has demonstrated the effects of educational interventions on planned food safety behaviors in various settings; however, none have studied GMPs interventions and college students. This study applied the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to evaluate the effects of a game-based e-learning module on undergraduate students’ planned behaviors concerning GMPs. Forty-four participants were recruited from 42 food science clubs across the United States to complete a game-based e-learning module and pre- and posttest survey instruments. We compared changes in pre- and posttest scores using paired Wilcoxon signed rank tests and explored the role of GMP-related knowledge and TPB constructs (attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral controls) in predicting students’ intentions to implement GMPs using multiple linear regression. We modeled pretest scores, posttest scores, and changes in scores while controlling for student demographic factors (for example, year in college, gender, and so on). Only participants’ knowledge and perceived behavioral controls significantly increased (P < 0.05) after completing the game-based e-learning module. Posttest regression models explained twice as much variance than pretest models (up to 54% total). Changes in intentions to implement GMPs were predicted by changes in subjective norms, perceived behavioral controls, and knowledge, as well as previous enrollment in food safety courses and interest in working in the food industry. The only predictive variables for both pre- and posttest scores were subjective norms, previous enrollment in food safety courses and interest in working in the food industry (P < 0.05). A discussion of how these results provide insights for food safety educators to optimize their teaching impacts was presented.

The 1st step in successfully intervening with students who may fail a course is to identify them as early as possible in the semester. The objective of this study was to create a model to predict student performance in FDSC 4304, the required capstone Food Chemistry class, using academic performance in prerequisite courses as potential predictors. We analyzed data for 116 undergraduates who completed Food Chemistry (FDSC 4304) between 2008 and 2015. Data included semester of enrollment and grade earned in FDSC 4304; transfer status; grades in prerequisite classes in science, math, and statistics courses and an introductory Food Science course, FDSC 1103; and the students’ university GPA at the time of enrollment in FDSC 4304. Cumulative GPA had the strongest significant (P < 0.001) positive correlation with FDSC 4304 grade (r = 0.64), followed by grade in statistics GPA (r = 0.52), FDSC 1103 grade (r = 0.45), pre-requisite chemistry GPA (r = 0.44), and biology GPA (r = 0.42). When using partial correlations to control for cumulative GPA, only grades in FDSC 1103 (completed by 62.9% of students) were significantly correlated with grades in FDSC 4304. Linear regression indicated cumulative GPA and FDSC 1103 grades explained 35.5% of the variance in FDSC 4304 grades. When cumulative GPA (available for 91.6% of students) alone was regressed on FDSC 4304, it explained 40.6% of the variance for the larger group. Lower cumulative GPAs and FDSC 1103 grades are suggestive but not determinative of potential student struggles in FDSC 4304. Instructors should use cumulative GPAs and introductory food science course grades (either alone or in combination) with actual early course performance measures to identify students in need of additional help.

If you are a teacher, I bet you can relate to the following situation. You meet someone for the first time and during the conversation it comes out that you are a teacher. More times than not, their first question is, “So, what do you teach?” For many, many years I responded by sharing with the person that I teach food science. Sometimes, I would follow up by explaining some of the specific areas that food science includes, such as food chemistry, food engineering, food microbiology, sensory science, and so on. Other times, I would tell them about some of the graduate level topics I teach, such as water relations in foods and scientific communications. Recently, I realized my response needed a paradigm shift. I decided the next time I was asked what I teach I was going to enthusiastically respond, “I teach students!”

This paradigm shift was brought about, in part, by a recent request by the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences (ACES) to review our “What I do and why it matters” statements.1 I decided to rewrite my statement and include one sentence about my research and one sentence about my teaching. As I began to write about the subject matter that I teach, it dawned on me that the important thing was not the subject matter I teach, but rather that I teach students the subject matter.

I don't think anyone would argue that it is critically important for teachers to know the subject matter they teach. In the same regard, my new response implies that it is also critically important for teachers to know the students they teach. I know how to learn about the subject matter I teach, but how do I get to know the students I teach? As I ponder this journey of getting to know my students, it seems there are two general aspects to consider – getting to know them as individuals and getting to know them as a cultural group, that is, as today's young adults (Millennials, Generation Z). We have touched upon the first aspect of this journey in previous editorials that focused on caring for our students (see Schmidt, 2016a, 2016b, 2017), but it seems equally important to take a look into the second aspect of this journey – who are these young adults and what do they need from us educators?

Truthfully, in and of myself, I am not well equipped to fully address these questions, but don't fear, the literature is here! An excellent “read” that directly and comprehensively addresses these questions is “Marching Off the Map: Inspiring Students to Navigate a Brand New World” by Tim Elmore and Andrew McPeak (2017). As the title implies, this book is not about putting new wine (new strategies and techniques) into old wine skins (the same old educational system), but rather about drawing an entirely new educational map – moving our practices from “old school” to “new school.” Elmore and McPeak argue the need for a “new map” for teaching and leading the youth of today b

Setting instructional goals to drive student engagement in the classroom is essential, as research has shown that improved student engagement in a course will affect student success, as well as the development of key personal and professional skills. Student engagement is a multifaceted concept with multiple perspectives. In focusing on the behavioral perspective of student engagement, various effective teaching practices can be implemented to encourage engagement in a diverse study body. Utilizing validated tools, such as the Natl. Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Engagement Themes and Indicators, can ease the development of classroom approaches to student engagement with convenience and flexibility. Semester-long student engagement in a food science undergraduate product development capstone course was encouraged through instructional approaches styled around the NSSE Engagement Themes and Indicators. The variety of instructional approaches utilized in the capstone food science course are described in detail and discussed in relation to the NSSE Engagement Themes and Indicators with which they align.

This multiyear study helps elucidate how the instructional practice of student-generated questions support learning in a blended classroom in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects. Students designed multiple-choice pre-exam questions aimed at higher levels of learning, according to Bloom's taxonomy. Student-generated questions were edited by the instructor and then discussed by the students in the classroom and in an online forum. We tested the hypothesis that this intervention improves student learning, measured as student achievement on the exam following the intervention, and compared to student achievement on the traditional exam (prior to which a review session focused on instructor-led recitation of the key concepts). Following the intervention in all years, average grade on the post-intervention exam increased by 7.44%. It is important to point out that not all students benefited equally from this activity. Students who were in the 4th quintile (60% to 80%) based on the results of the 1st exam demonstrated the highest achievement improving their performance on average by 12.37% percentage points (measured as a score on the 2nd exam). Gains were not observed in the semesters when the intervention was not implemented. In this study we provided students detailed instructions on how to design questions that focus on testing higher levels of learning.