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 organisatio

Efficient Transparency in Meat Supply Chains with IT-Standards: EPCIS based Tracking & Tracing for Business Partners, Consumers and Authorities

How can the future agri-food business be made more efficient, transparent and safe? This article on a new MIP meat transparency system describes a future system aiming for an efficient transparency in meat supply chains with ITstandards. The shape of the new system will be highlighted on the background of preliminary ICT solutions and the recent developments in the FIspace project. The core of the supply chain wide transparency is built upon the EPCIS standard from GS1 which enables transparency in the cloud for all stakeholders. Not only the prerequisites but also the benefits from using such a standardized solution are explained for the different user groups. The article closes with an outlook to the further improvements and the expanded usage with new funding by the EU

Enabling Transparency in Meat Supply Chains: tracking & tracing for supply chain partners, consumers and authorities

This paper discusses a new system that enables meat supply chain stakeholders and regulators or authorities to track and trace and – at the same time – allows meat consumers to use their smartphone (or internet) to get immediate and direct access to all information on the specific meat item they see at the butcher or in the supermarket. This meat transparency system follows meat through the supply chain and stores its history. Apps help supply chain partners to upload the data they want or have to share and apps help them, authorities and consumers to get the stored history in a format that fits the intended user. As the system is based on the international EPCIS standard, roll-out of the meat transparency system to other supply chains (other types of meat, other types of food and other countries) is easy and straight forward

On design-oriented research and digital learning materials in higher education

The context of the research described in this thesis is formed by a number of research projects that were aimed at the design, development, implementation, use and evaluation of innovative digital learning materials. Most of these projects were carried out mainly within Wageningen University. In this thesis, these projects are collectively referred to as 'WU Projects'. During this research it became clear that available literature provided insufficient support with respect to a number of issues. Examples are 'How to phrase research questions?', 'What output to expect?', 'What type of evaluation is relevant?' and 'What methods should be used?'. In fact, in parallel with the WU projects, the body of literature on methodology for design related research approaches in several disciplines was growing considerably. This thesis aims to contribute to this methodological discussion. In addition, this thesis presents a view on the characteristics and possibilities of digital learning materials in higher education. In Chapters 2,3 and 4, a methodological framework for design, development, implementation, use and evaluation of innovative digital learning materials in higher education is defined and elaborated. Research that fits this framework is called design-oriented research (DOR). The framework is the result of a systems-oriented theoretical discussion of literature from a range of knowledge domains such as learning and instruction, knowledge and information systems research and engineering design. The concepts and terminology are illustrated with examples from publications that resulted from various WU projects. In addition, part of the framework is captured in a glossary of terms. The glossary aims to provide a coherent and ‘workable’ set of terms and corresponding definitions or descriptions. For many terms, this implies a compromise between natural language preferences of members of different disciplines. In Chapter 4, a classification of outputs that are potentially valuable is presented. An important implication of the view presented in this chapter, is that the actual design goal can be output, rather than input of a DOR project. This is in agreement with the view of instructional design and design of digital learning resources as processes of constraint exploration and constraint satisfaction. In Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 the most important strategic decisions in DOR projects that aim to deliver digital learning materials in higher education are discussed. In Chapter 5, a classification of design goals with their relation to various knowledge domains is presented. In Chapter 6, a classification of large-scale use scenarios with their relation to design requirements is given. Finally, Chapter 7 describes requirements and opportunities for evaluation in design-oriented research in education and reflects on evaluation in a number of WU projects. This leads to a number of suggestions for improvement with respect to evaluation in DOR.</p