DOI
10.1108/IJSHE-01-2016-0010

Summary
This paper involves the assessment of students’ experiential learning tasks to develop sustainable food systems and dietary practices for nutrition students. The paper itself is numbered per line making for easy reference here.

The newly enrolled students were placed in a three week eco-friendly food challenge. They reported their findings through blogging and responded to a weekly question and assigned challenge here also.

Students were required to select one of the following challenges to report on I their blogs: 1. Reduce food and related waste, 2. Localise food purchases, 3. Eat seasonally & sustainability or 4. Reduce meat consumption (Lines 25-27). The independent challenges were also supplemented by lectures and tutorials on food sustainability, blog genres, each challenges academic resources and the reflection and writing process as described by Borton’s reflective framework (1970). The students were also asked to investigate topics of personal interest that fell under these topics – this was aligned with adult learning theory by Merriam (2001). The blog posts were categorised by 1. Action/activity (what the students did), 2. What was learned (students reflection) and 3. Response to reflective question (now what?).

Analysis of blogs was conducted using NVivo 10.




Of the 143 students and 402 blogs submitted, the chosen challenges for blogs completed was as follows:

1 = 125, 2 = 73, 3 = 41 and 4 = 156.

The students reflections and points of discussion are reported and discussed in text and tables within lines 180 – 344.




Findings suggested that students had developed better self-awareness, knowledge and problem solving skills. Planning and preparation was found the be the most common factor of importance mentioned by the students.   

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The teaching of sustainability awareness and complex thinking is demonstrated in this paper.

Research has suggested that students in this field have a general perception of the importance of food supply and sustainability but however have found that there is major inconsistency in food system and sustainability issues knowledge and opportunities to develop their understanding of such topics.  

Experiential learning is the focus point for this study. Maher & Burkhart describe experiential learning as – ‘experience coupled with reflection will contribute to deeper learning than what may be seen with pure theoretical. The reflective stage encourages students to reflect on their learning and outcomes, and has reported to be an effective vehicle for providing learning experiences to nutrition and dietetic students’. While blogs are a relatively new method of student learning, they are found to develop the critical thinking skills required for environmental knowledge.

Students reported a clear development in independent further research on the topics they found themselves challenged by (lines  236 – 244). Here the authors essentially make reference to the development of systems thinking e.g students researched local food producers, markets and retailers and social/community implications at each level and were equipped to understand the sustainability skills and resources required at each level (lines 239 – 244).




Table 4: ‘Common barriers and advice reported in response to week 2 action orientated reflective question’ (lines 307 – 308) contains an example of student data, and solutions found to issues relating to food systems and sustainability which demonstrates the learning process that these students experienced from this methodology.

Point of Strength
Maher & Burkhart show how blogging as an experiential learning methodology has a clear benefit for creating an environment of systems thinking on their food sustainability topics. Of course this is also largely down to the quality of the questions asked but still brings the benefit of this relatively new method to the attention of academic staff or other researchers.

The paper makes a clear point that students have developed the understanding for a sustainable food system which is highlighted by lines 239 - 244

Table 5 depicts the suggestions provided by the students on each challenge of the study and would be useful for a good summary of the feedback findings.

The assessment process allowed students to work at their own level appropriate to their learning context (what they already knew and didn’t know). The authors state that it would be an interesting further study to investigate the effect of peer support and interaction under this context of experiential learning (lines 425 – 429).

Maher & Burkhart also state that this study may have a use for inter-disciplinary environmental sustainability learning activities at early stages of their education.