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Writing outcomes and assessing student learning in a junior level food processing course |
K. D. HAYES, Dept. of Food Science, Purdue Univ., 745 Agricultural Mall Dr., West Lafayette, IN 47907-2009 In 2001, IFT revised the curriculum guidelines that undergraduate Food Science programs must follow to become IFT approved. The new guidelines moved from general course requirements to specific outcome requirements in the various core competency areas. The guidelines stipulate that for each outcome an appropriate assessment procedure be in place to evaluate whether students obtained the outcome as well as identify the depth of understanding the student is expected to obtain (e.g. knowledge, comprehension, application, etc). The objective of this work was to outline a process for implementation of IFT’s outcome-based curriculum requirements in a junior level food processing course. Approximately two hundred specific outcomes were written to address the food processing-related topics of: 1) concentration, 2) water activity, 3) dehydration, 4) extrusion, 5) irradiation, 6) chemical preservation, 7) packaging, and 8) alternative processing technologies. Each outcome was written to represent a narrowly focused behavior that the student should be able to display upon completion of that particular course topic. An assessment regime was instituted that included traditional exams, homework’s, lab reports, and a lab project. Outcomes were made available to students prior to each exam. With outcomes written, writing exam and homework questions with construct validity was simplified. A multiple-choice exam was used to assess student achievement on lower-level outcomes while homework questions, lab reports, and the lab project were used to assess higher level cognitive domains. Exams were administered prior to homework assignments because completing homework problems required knowledge and comprehension skills. Overall, students were very satisfied with their academic performance and many commented on the “fairness” of the assessment procedures and “ease of learning” by following this instructional approach. Implementation of IFT’s curriculum guidelines in a junior level food processing course was simplified by using the hierarchical nature of learning in assessment and instructional design procedures.
Session 35, Assessment of learning outcomes in food science
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