Rob Hartog

DESIGN OF ACTIVATING DIGITAL LEARNING MATERIAL FOR FOOD CHEMISTRY EDUCATION

A complete set of digital exercises for introductory Food Chemistry has been developed. The major function of the exercises is to promote active acquisition of food chemistry knowledge. This paper describes the design process and the result of the design process. Design guidelines and requirements were derived, based on theories about cognitive load, motivation and active learning. The digital exercises were designed according to these guidelines. Next, teachers, students, and experts in (food) chemistry, education and user-interface design tested the digital exercises against the design requirements. Consequentially, a number of exercises were adjusted and currently the exercises are in use at several universities. The article describes the exercises in detail, with several illustrative examples. An in depth view on the possibilities to create digital learning objects for food chemistry in accordance to a set of practical guidelines is given. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.: 2003, 4, 353-371]

Author-defined storage in the next generation learning management systems

One of the current trends in e-learning is the development of student-activating learning material. In four research projects aiming at the design of high quality learning material, a large body of student-activating learning material is being developed. During the development of this learning material, the limitations of the current generation learning management systems became obvious. The forthcoming SCORM 1.3 standard will resolve some of these limitations, but we have identified six additional functional requirements. The learning management system should enable adaptivity, the retrieval of history and state, comparison of results, tracking for pedagogical research, shared reference databases, and problem scenario databases. Each requirement is illustrated with examples from learning material developed in one of the research projects. An overview is also given of temporary workarounds we have developed to deploy this learning material in the current generation of learning management systems. However, we argue that future learning management systems with an author-defined storage facility will satisfy all six requirements.

Support of modeling in process‐engineering education

An objective of the Process Technology curriculum at Wageningen University is to teach students a stepwise modeling approach in the context of process engineering. Many process‐engineering students have difficulty with learning to design a model. Some common problems are lack of structure in the design activity, “getting lost” in the abundance of available mathematical equations that describe similar processes in different situations and problems with correctly typing the equations into the modeling software. To reduce these problems there is a need for a set of educational tools to support students when learning how to design models. This paper describes a set of tools that can easily be integrated within a web‐based learning‐management system. The tool set is based on a 5‐step modeling approach. The design and use of two tools of the set are described in detail: ModelComposer and ModelRunner. ModelComposer supports the student when composing a mathematical model. ModelRunner lets the user execute experiments with the model. The tools were used in a case study to get student and teacher feedback.

A Design Environment for Downstream Processes for Bioprocess-Engineering Students.

A bioprocess engineer should have at least a set of basic design skills. Bioprocess design is a complex cognitive skill, which should be trained in every year of an academic Bioprocess-Engineering curriculum. However, there is little existing learning material to support the initial training of design skills early in the curriculum. For this reason a web-based DownStream Process Design environment has been developed, called DSPD. This article describes the design criteria for the development of this design environment. It describes the design environment itself and it gives an impression of the use of the design environment in a course for first-year students.

Teaching: the role of active manipulation of three-dimensional scatter plots in understanding the concept of confounding

In teaching epidemiology, confounding is a difficult topic. The authors designed active learning objects (LO) based on manipulable three-dimensional (3D) plots to facilitate understanding of confounding. The 3D LOs help illustrate of how confounding can occur, how it generates bias and how to adjust for it. For the development of the LOs, guidelines were formulated based on epidemiology and theories of instructional design. These included integrating the conceptual and empirical aspects: the causal relationships believed to be operating in the study population (conceptual aspect) and data-oriented associations (empirical aspect). Other guidelines based on theories of instructional design included: actively engage the students, use visual methods when possible, and motivate the students about the importance of the topic. Students gave the method strong positive evaluations. Experts in epidemiology agreed that the 3D LOs apply generally accepted scientific views on confounding. Based on their experiences, the authors think that the 3D plots can be useful addition in the teaching of confounding. The article includes links and a downloadable file that provide a demonstration of the 3D LO-based teaching materials.

Evaluation of computer-based learning material for food chemistry education

Digital exercises were designed and developed for food chemistry education. During the design process, design requirements were described for such exercises. The exercises were evaluated in three case studies, firstly to determine whether the exercises satisfy the design requirements with respect to students’ use and secondly to provide insight into the effect of the course structure and organisation on the value that the students attribute to the exercises. The results show that the exercises meet most of the design requirements. Students found the exercises clear and helpful, and most students confirmed that these exercises helped them in their preparations for their examinations. Despite this, participation in the programme was low when working on the exercises was not compulsory. The differences in evaluation results between the three studies can be explained by differences in the course structure and organisation. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2005, 6 (2), 64-82]

Using recipe classes for supporting detailed planning in food industry: A case study

This paper describes a modelling method that reduces the effort required to develop a decision support system for scheduling in food industry, based on constraint satisfaction techniques. Most food manufacturers schedule manually. Part of the information used by human planners is hard to formalise. In the literature on detailed scheduling and in software libraries for building scheduling systems the recipe concept is lacking, while in semi-process industry and in data-models of Enterprise Resource Planning modules for process industry the recipe concept plays a central role. We argue that the addition of a recipe class reduces the formalisation or modelling effort. The recipe class proposed not only stores information closely related to the information captured in a general recipe in food industry but also generates activities and constraints necessary to produce a schedule. We implemented and tested a recipe-based model in a prototype for scheduling support in a salad factory.

Digital Learning Material for Student-Directed Model Building in Molecular Biology

The building of models to explain data and make predictions constitutes an important goal in molecular biology research. To give students the opportunity to practice such model building, two digital cases had previously been developed in which students are guided to build a model step by step. In this article, the development and initial evaluation of a third digital case is described. It concerns the selection of bristles during Drosophila development. To mimic a real research situation in a more realistic way, students are given much more freedom while building their models and can thus follow their own model‐building approach. At the same time, however, students are provided with a sufficient amount of support to ensure that they can build their models without the requirement of intensive supervision.

A Digital Tool Set for Systematic Model Design in Process-Engineering Education

One of the objectives of the process technology curriculum at Wageningen University is that students learn how to design mathematical models in the context of process engineering, using a systematic problem analysis approach. Students find it difficult to learn to design a model and little material exists to meet this learning objective. For these reasons, a set of digital tools has been developed to support students when learning to design mathematical models. The set of tools enables a process engineering student to do each step in the systematic approach for designing models while providing feedback on the actions of the student. The current paper describes both the system, the underlying design decisions and how one such case is used in a regular educational setting. Evaluation after use in a regular educational setting shows that students are very positive about the fact that there is feedback on every step of the design process and that there is no need to deal with complicated mathematics.

Design and Development of Digital Learning Material for Applied Data Analysis

Digital learning material was developed to help students acquire the necessary skills for the preparation and implementation of a data analysis protocol. The learning material focused on the relation between the main experimental and observational study types in human nutrition research and the appropriate methods of data analysis. This article describes the main guidelines derived from theories on learning and instruction and illustrates how they were used to develop the digital learning material. Evaluation of the learning material in an academic context indicated that students appreciated the learning material and achieved the learning objectives.