Food engineering is a broad field and I think it critical that students be able to understand basic principles and use them to analyze situations and equipment with which they inevitably have little initial familiarity. I view a significant part of my role as instuctor to be teaching students the language of engineering and relatedly how to use this new knowledge to identify materials that might be useful to class but also during future professional careers, i.e., I view myself more as facilitator for learning than a sole source of knowledge.
I am also lucky enough to teach groups of students with significant food processing experience through internship or prior work life and strive to bring their knowledge into the class. This is definitely something that could be done better, however, and I am hoping to use the enhanced discussion forum capabilities of canvas to bring out these experiences and improve the performance and understanding of all the students in each class.
