Abstract:

The Degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Arts at the University of Alicante aims to provide the student with in-depth knowledge about the characteristics of the gastronomic industry, as well as its relationship with the physical and social environment. In this way, the student, at the end of their studies, will have sufficient training and skills to create, innovate, produce, transform, solve problems, promote and manage gastronomic services of any level, both in the food industry and in commercial catering or collective. To achieve this, the degree includes basic training subjects from different branches of knowledge, related to knowledge of food (biology, physics, chemistry, etc.), food business management, marketing, tourism, etc. social skills, human resources, health and human nutrition. Among these subjects, this teaching research is contextualized in the Bromatology subject (6 ECTS), taught in the first year with 72 students enrolled in the 2020/2021 academic year. The group of students is very heterogeneous in terms of their academic training prior to entering the aforementioned degree. Therefore, the objective of this teaching innovation activity is to detect the training needs and deficiencies of students to design, implement and evaluate the most appropriate educational actions to improve their initial preparation.

The methodology for establishing the teaching action was established in 4 phases:
a) PHASE 1: Design of the teaching activity;
b) PHASE 2: Implementation of the teaching activity;
c) PHASE 3: Analysis of the results obtained and proposals for improvement;
d) PHASE 4: Dissemination of the results of the teaching activity and development of teaching innovation material.

In the framework of Phase 1, an analysis of the initial student´s skills was carried out confirming that more than 60% of the students have no or very little knowledge on chemistry, biology, among others.

In addition, other transversal deficiencies were detected such as: insufficient skills in computing, in reading and understanding a foreign language and in the correct writing of academic documents. Once the deficiencies were detected, and in order to improve them, in the framework of Phase 2, different teaching materials were developed including the viewing of short videos with simple explanations on basic concepts of chemistry (concept of pH, basic notions on nomenclature of organic compounds, among others), short audio presentations on basic chemical laboratory operations, flipped classroom on equations, simple mathematical calculations and Excel editing, as well as games (word searches, crosswords) on materials commonly used in the laboratory. Once the developed teaching materials were implemented, the results obtained from questionnaires were evaluated for the students to find out their opinion on the effectiveness of both the teaching-learning process proposed, as well as the new materials generated. In addition, a significant improvement in the final student´s qualifications was confirmed compared to those obtained in previous courses.

Keywords:

Gastronomy, Bromatology, Workshop, Support learning, Teaching activity.