Food Science Education Publications and Websites (2010)

The purpose of this column is to highlight innovative publications and websites in food science education and allied topics. If you know of a website or a recent publication that you believe other readers would like to know about, please submit the full text of the article or the URL for the website and an annotation of not more than 125 words. We welcome your resources and comments on this column. Material should be submitted to: Jim Bird, Science & Engineering Center, Fogler Library, Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5729, or e-mail to Jim.Bird@umit.maine.edu. If e-mailing, please put “JFSE submission” in the subject line. Cocoa and chocolate, and a host of other foods as well, can be used in a classroom to teach a variety of human geography topics including cultural patterns, population variables, and economic and development issues. With extensive background information on cocoa and chocolate provided, the author, an Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Planning at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, describes high school and college classroom activities that can be used to integrate food study into the human geography classroom. At the end of the article, there is a list of web resources to explore. The authors wanted to see if there would be a change to healthier eating patterns in a group of college students taking the following course: “Food and society: Exploring eating behaviors in a social, environmental and policy context” when compared to students taking the following 3 courses: “Health psychology”, “Community assessment/health”, and “Obesity: Clinical/societal implications.” Those students taking the “food and society” course, which did not focus on health issues, developed healthier eating habits when compared to those students taking the other courses. In the conclusion the authors note: “The results are consistent with the stealth intervention model, suggesting that intervention effectiveness can be improved by focusing on process motivations rather than outcomes … .” (p. 546) The importance of elementary students gaining knowledge about agriculture and local resources is detailed in the authors’ description of an USDA-ARS/NSF-sponsored teacher's workshop. The workshop participants learned about the availability of USDA-ARS resources and classroom experiments. Using the development of disease-resistant wheat as the topic, the authors describe an experiment with fifth-grade students involving aphids and wheat seeds. Student assessment included journal logs and a student-written essay about wheat and pest management. Students did develop a greater understanding of agricultural and food production issues. A brief list of web resources is included. The author, who is the coordinator of the Green Ambassador program of Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale, CA, uses a two-bucket growing system to teach students about plant growth under differing conditions. Five growing conditions with accompanying procedures are described. A detailed description on how to make the self-watering container system is included. The experiments “ … introduce the concepts of sustainability, permaculture, and systems thinking … .” (p. 27) The authors, affiliated with the Univ. of Idaho Extension, describe the process by which they developed a “ready-to-go” food safety exhibit which covers 4 topics: at-risk groups, preserving food, food thermometers, and kitchen safety for kids. Each topic is represented by a colorful poster. Visit http://www.agls.uidaho.edu/foodsafety (accessed 11/16/2010) for downloadable copies of the posters and other information on food safety associated with the exhibit. Distance education courses have become popular due to the increased number of commuter students as well as people already in the workforce who need further education for advancement within their careers. In response, a graduate level web based course entitled Special Topics-Poultry Food Safety Microbiology was developed from an existing senior undergraduate advanced food microbiology course in the Poultry Science Department at Texas A&M Univ. The use of the internet as a teaching tool is becoming more prevalent; however, converting standard lecture material into a distance education course provides unique challenges to maintain comparable course content in an asynchronous manner. Students were offered simultaneous access to the in class lecture as well as the online material and were given a questionnaire at the end of the class. More than half of the students surveyed stated that they would be willing to take the course online as opposed to the more formal classroom setting, but they were not willing to pay an extra fee for the online class. A majority of students used the online version of the class because they had missed something in the face-to-face class, but somewhat less than half said that they had used the online version of the class in place of attending the face-to-face class. Forty percent of the students did not agree that online classes are easier than typical lecture classes but an almost equal percent were undecided about the question. Corliss A. O’Bryan, Post Doctoral Research Associate, Dept. of Food Science and Center for Food Safety, Univ. of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72704 The ChemCollective (http://www.chemcollective.org– accessed 11/16/2010) is a series of virtual labs that allows high school and college teachers to supplement physical laboratories and textbooks with web-based experiments. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the goals of the ChemCollective “ … are to support a community of instructors interested in improving chemistry education through interactive and engaging online activities.” (http://www.chemcollective.org/about.php– accessed 1/16/2010) The instructor section of the site includes an introduction; information on how instructors can request modifications, create and/or contribute an activity; and a page to find activities. The student section includes an introduction, chemistry tutorials, and information on running virtual labs. The site originated and is maintained at Carnegie Mellon Univ. The FAQ provides the information needed to get started.