Student Projects that Make a Meaningfuland Lasting Contribution to Course ContentShelly J. Schmidt

Abstract: The objective of this teaching tip is to share with others an idea of how to transform student projectsfrom a dead-end process to a value-added end product, value-added end products that make a meaningful and lastingcontribution to course content for use by future students.

Teaching TipI teach a large enrollment, introductory course entitled “Intro-

duction to Food Science and Human Nutrition (FSHN 101).”This course is divided into 4 sections: Nutrition and Health, FoodComposition and Chemistry, Food Microbiology and Processing,and Food Laws, Quality and the Consumer. I have taught thiscourse since Fall 1996. The course ranges in enrollment fromabout 120 students, mainly FSHN majors and minors, to 660students, mainly non-majors who selected FSHN 101 to fulfill aphysical science general education requirement. I am passionateabout teaching this course! I love coming up with new and excit-ing active and experiential learning activities intended to engagelarge numbers of students in the course material (e.g., Schmidt andothers 2002, Schmidt and Bohn 2008). I love introducing studentsto the fascinating and relevant fields of food science and humannutrition. But, what I didn’t love was early each semester, about3 to 12 students would approach me and ask if they could makeFSHN 101 a honors course. What this entailed was coming upwith a special project for each honors student to complete dur-ing the semester. If the student successfully completed the projectand received a B or higher in the course, then s/he would re-ceive honors credit in the course. All James Scholar students at theUniversity of Illinois are required to obtain a certain number ofhonors credits each year, either by taking specially designated hon-ors courses or by obtaining honors credit in one of their regularcourses (termed by one student as “honorizing” the course).

The reason I didn’t love students doing honors projects inFSHN 101 was neither the extra work nor the extra time re-quired, but rather the dead-end process that seemed to ensuewith each project. Each student and I would come up with anappropriate topic on which the student would write a researchpaper. After researching the topic, the student would submit to

MS 20130002 Submitted 1/18/2012, Accepted 1/25/2013. Author Schmidt iswith Dept. of Food Science and Human Nutrition 367, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL USA (E-mail: sjs@illinois.edu).

me an 8 to 10 page draft of their paper, and then I would providethem feedback. The student would revise the paper based on mycomments and resubmit the paper for honors credit. The studentwould receive honors credit, and I would subsequently file thepaper in my FSHN 101 Honors Project file drawer. Then in 3 to5 years, when the file drawer would fill up, I would transfer thepapers to the circular file, a.k.a. the garbage can or more greenlythe recycle bin. One day, as I was recycling some of the papersto make room for more, I remember asking myself “Isn’t theresomething more useful that could be done than students writinga paper that ends up in this file drawer?” The answer seemed tocome to me in a flash—why not have students contribute usefulcontent back to the course for use by future FSHN 101 students?That simple question and the subsequent flash answer led to thedevelopment of a new honors project system in FSHN 101.

In the new honors project system, students still choose an ap-propriate FSHN topic to learn and communicate about, but thegoal is for students to create a value-added end product that makesa meaningful and lasting contribution to course content for use byfuture student via linkage of the project to the FSHN 101 coursewebsite. One of the first value-added projects was a table of poten-tial effects and side effects of some popular herbal remedies, dietarysupplements, and hormones. A similar table of potential effects andside effects of some popular sports nutrition dietary supplementswas added a few semesters later. These tables remain valuableadditions to the course website, allowing interested students theopportunity to look up not only the reported positive benefits ofdifferent supplements, but also their possible negative side effectsas well. Also, the tables can be updated with new information as itbecomes available. Students are excited about contributing usefulcontent to the course website that will be used by future students.They are also excited that their name goes on their course websitecontribution for all to see, a unique accomplishment that can belisted on their resumes.

One additional benefit of this new honors project system isthat the honors students get to experience what it is like to de-sign course content, a much different experience than writinga research paper. Since the project contribution is linked to the

C© 2013 Institute of Food Technologists R©doi: 10.1111/1541-4329.12006 Vol. 12, 2013 • Journal of Food Science Education 61

Student projects . . .

Table 1–Descriptions of 2 example value-added honors projects from each of the 4 sections of the undergraduate FSHN 101 course.

Course Section Brief Project Descriptions

Nutrition and Health Eating Disorders: A Word document linked to the Nutritional Adequacy and The Body lecture thatsummarizes the diagnostic criteria for 3 common eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa; Bulimia Nervosa;and Binge Eating Disorder. The document contains a link for more information and additional resourcesand assistance on eating disorders available on the University of Illinois campus.

Energy Drinks with Alcohol: Fun or Fatal? A PowerPoint Presentation linked to the Functional Foods andDietary Supplements lecture that explains the potential effects and side effects of these new drinks, thecurrent U.S. regulations and bans, and the reported problems arising from consumption of these drinks,especially on college campuses.

Food Composition and Chemistry Molecular Gastronomy∗: A PowerPoint Presentation linked to the Food Chemistry: The Basics lecture thatexplains the underlying principles of the relatively new field of Molecular Gastronomy. Using thedefinition of Molecular Gastronomy as a discipline that uses science to explore the technical, as well asthe art and emotional aspects, of cooking, the presentation illustrates the technical, artistic, andemotional (e.g., romantic) aspects of the discipline using numerous food examples, such as chocolatecake garnished with chilled cream, traces of gold, and smoky bubbles of cocoa and grilled watermelonsphere salad.

Color Additives in the News: A table linked to the Food Additives: Identity and Functionality lecture thatdiscusses color additives that have been in the news because of their association with possible negativehealth effects, including cancer, allergic reactions, and hyperactivity in children.

Food Microbiology and Processing Smells Like Socks, Tastes Like Heaven: A PowerPoint Presentation linked to the Microorganisms: FoodFermentation lecture that traces the history of mold ripened cheeses and documents the making of bluecheese and why it tastes so good, but smells so stinky.

Food Biotechnology: A PowerPoint Presentation linked to the Biotechnology: Employing Microorganismsfor Food Production lecture that traces the historical development of biotechnology and outlines themajor controversies surrounding today’s modern food biotechnology practices.

Food Laws, Quality and the Consumer Common Chemical Sense∗ : A PowerPoint Presentation linked to the Sensory Science lecture that explains,using a number of images, what common chemical sense is and how it works. To illustrate the hugerange in the hotness of peppers (from the chemical compound capsaicin), the presentation shows thehotness rating in Scoville heat units for different peppers, from bell peppers, which contain no capsaicinwith a value of 0, to Trinidad Scorpion Moruga peppers with a rating as high as 2,000,000.

Deficiency Diseases Caused by Hunger: A Word document linked to the Global Hunger lecture thatprovides a description of 6 major deficiency diseases associated with hunger, their symptoms and sideeffects (including pictures to show advanced clinical symptoms), groups most affected, treatmentoptions, and preventive measures.

∗Designates that the project was added as supplemental material to the JFSE website as an example.

Table 2–Descriptions of example value-added projects from 2 graduate level courses.

Course Brief Project Description

Water Relations in Foods (FSHN 595) Students are given 3 options for their course project. One of the options is to make a contribution toenhance the teaching and learning of a specific topic related to the course. The end product of thisproject is a contribution to the FSHN 595 and/or FSHN 101 websites or a contribution to the Wikipediawebsite. Two example projects are a video tour of a freeze-drying company made for use in FSHN 595and a contribution to Wikipedia on the subject of Chocolate Bloom (2009).

Advanced Special Problems (FSHN 598) As the course project, a graduate student wrote and produced a 2-minute Xtranormal video for use inFSHN 101 explaining the benefits of the USDA’s MyPlate. The video entitled “Panda and Nutrition Fairyon MyPlate” is available on YouTube (Boyd 2012). Xtranormal (2013) is a digital entertainmentcompany that produces do-it-yourself animation software for the web and desktop, which allows theuser to turn words (text-to-speech) into an animated movie.

course website, the students need to work at delivering their mes-sage in a visually impactful manner, both to actively engage thelearner and to assist the learner in quickly grasping the contentof their contribution. A favorite term I use when explaining thisconcept of visually impactfulness is that I want the students toproduce an information-rich visual explanationi of their topic,that is, I want them to tell their “story” with images, diagrams,graphs, video clips, animations, anthropomorphic images, car-toons, samples, demonstrations, experiments, and performancesof the subject matter, not just words. When asked how long thisvisually impactful project should be my favorite response is: striveto “make it short and sweet.” Students want to get a lot out ofwhat they spend their time looking at, but they don’t want tospend a long time doing it.

Since implementing this new honors project paradigm in 2003,several projects have been added to enhance the course contentof the FSHN 101 website. Descriptions of 2 value-added honors

i For more on the topic of visual explanations the interested reader is encour-aged to view the article by Schmidt (2009) entitled “Development and Use ofVisual Explanations: Harnessing the Power of the “Seeing” Brain to EnhanceStudent Learning.”

projects from each of the 4 sections of FSHN 101 are given asexamples in Table 1. As designated in Table 1, 2 of the projectshave been added as supplemental material to the JFSE website forthe interested reader.

One of the most unique FSHN 101 honors projects was a songabout the importance of the concept of water activity in rela-tion to the stability of food systems. The student wrote the lyricsand, together with a friend, recorded the song, complete withguitar accompaniment. The song was so well received that a fewsemesters later, the same student contributed another song for ad-dition to the FSHN 101 website about the nutritional benefits ofdrinking milk. This 2nd song was completed as a small indepen-dent project. I wanted to mention these song projects, becausethey demonstrate the diverse project options available to studentsunder the new value-added project system. Students can use theirtalents to create an end product that contributes not only to learn-ing the course content, but also to the ever-important element ofmaking the course fun!

The value-added honors projects have worked so well in FSHN101 that I have since included them as an option for regularcourse projects in other undergraduate, as well as in graduate,

62 Journal of Food Science Education • Vol. 12, 2013 Available on-line through ift.org

Student projects . . .

courses. Table 2 provides brief project descriptions of examplevalues-added projects for 2 graduate level courses.

Of course there are still a few challenges with the new honorsproject system. First, not all projects make the grade, so-to-speak,of being appended to the course website. Honors credit can still beachieved, but the project is not linked to the course website. Oneof the major reasons for projects not being linked to the coursewebsite is that they are not sufficiently engaging. As mentionedabove, it is important that the content of the course website be asattractive and engaging for learning as possible. In order to addressthis challenge, I have recently added a step in the project processwhere students are required to obtain feedback on their projectfrom fellow classmates, specifically on the quality of the learningengagement aspect of their project. Second, once a project hasbeen successfully completed for a specific topic, that topic is nolonger available for selection. It is possible that overtime an updateto the topic is required and the topic could be come availableagain, but for the time being the topic is unavailable. The upside ofthis challenge is that it requires some students to think beyond theobvious topics, digging into less typical, but nonetheless interestingaspects of food science and human nutrition. Third, since selectionof a project topic needs to be done relatively early in the semester(approximately by the third week of the semester), students tend tosuggest possible topics from the first section of the course, Healthand Nutrition, potentially resulting in an imbalance in projects forthe other sections of the course. In an attempt to elevate thisproblem, when students are trying to select a topic, I ask themwhat got them interested in food science and human nutrition inthe first place. Often their responses lead to a plethora of possibletopics that touch upon all sections of the course.

Despite the above-mentioned challenges, overall, this newproject system implemented in FSHN 101 and beyond is workingmarvelously. In fact, now I can add to the loves mentioned in theintroduction that I also love doing honors projects, value-addedhonors projects that is, with students in FSHN 101!

AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank all of the students who have participated in

the new project system described in this article. I greatly appreciatethe meaningful and lasting contributions that you have made to theIllinois Food Science and Human Nutrition courses mentionedherein and, moreover, to the learning of numerous future Illini.

ReferencesBohn DM, Schmidt SJ. 2008. Implementing experiential learning activities

in a large enrollment introductory food science and human nutritioncourse. J Food Sci Educat 7(1):5–13.

Boyd J. 2012. Panda and Nutrition Fairy on MyPlate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT0nA-os8UU&feature=youtube_gdata_player. Lastaccessed on January 10, 2013.

Chocolate Bloom 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_bloom.Last accessed on January 19, 2013.

Schmidt SJ. 2009. Development and use of visual explanations: harnessingthe power of the “seeing” brain to enhance student learning. J Food SciEducat, 8:68–72.

Schmidt SJ, Parmer MS, Javenkoski JS. 2002. Sharing our experiences withwriting-for-learning techniques in a large introductory course: the dailymicrotheme. J Food Sci Educat 1:28–33.

Xtranormal 2013. http://www.xtranormal.com. Last accessed on January 18,2013.

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