11 Mar Case study: safefood for life Blended Learning Course

Title: Case study: safefood for life Blended Learning Course

Client: safefood

About safefood

safefood is an all-island body, set up under the British-Irish Agreement Act 1999. Their role is to promote awareness and knowledge of food safety and nutrition on the island of Ireland. To do this they:

• Provide healthy eating and food safety advice to the public
• Carry out research into food safety
• Promote scientific co-operation and links between laboratories
• Provide independent assessment of the food supply
• Carry out surveillance of diet-related disease.

safefood for Life is a certified food safety programme from safefood for secondary school and Youthreach students studying home economics or catering. The programme is available in post-primary schools in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. safefood for life aims to help students develop important food safety skills. On completion of the online examination successful students will meet the minimum training requirements to work in the food industry.

The Learning Challenge

safefood needed to provide a set of engaging learning resources to enable teachers to deliver food safety training. The programme needed to equip students with the knowledge to undertake a Primary Certificate in Food Hygiene, certified by The Environmental Health Officer’s Association (EHAI). safefood had an existing resource that needed to be updated and they had access to food science experts to guide new content in areas such as food allergens. safefood required a digital learning specialist to design a blended learning approach that would deliver the learning outcomes, engage the students and provide a resource that enabled home economics teachers to easily roll out the safefood for Life programme within their school.

Our Solution

The Learning Rooms partnered with safefood to help them develop a solution that can be used in the classroom or as part of a blended learning programme. The ten 45-minute lessons cover the following topics:

• Food Hygiene – Why Bother?
• Food Contamination
• Food Delivery and Storage
• Food Preparation, Cooking and Service
• Personal Hygiene
• Design and Layout of Food Premises
• Cleaning and Pest Control
• Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP)
• Food Allergies, Food Intolerance and Coeliac Disease.

Each lesson contains an eLearning module that uses animations, videos, quizzes and mini-games (such as word searches and matching activities) to teach and engage students. Accompanying the eLearning module is a teachers’ resource which provides additional research tasks and discussion topics for the classroom.Designed for all literacy levels, the modern, interactive lessons have achieved the NALA Plain English Mark.

The Learning Rooms transformed the safefood for life, food safety programme into an engaging, contemporary, and interactive eLearning resource that is suitable for post-primary learning environments. The resource allows students engage with the subject matter, in realistic settings, using features that effectively promote active learning. At the same time, it gives teachers the flexibility to create lessons specific to their classes needs and learning objectives. 

Alice Sheahan, Communications Executive, safefood

Key project results:

• Articulate Storyline 360
• Video and audio learning
• Gamification
• Interactive and engaging content
• Blended learning
• Teacher resources.