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- Author or Editor: Dennis Osborne x
Many potential students, because of distance from the University campus and/or job requirements, cannot take traditional courses on-campus. This group of learners is place-bound—a group of learners who may be employed full-time, most-likely married with job responsibilities and/or other situations demanding most of their attention. These persons are the very definition of nontraditional, and their educational needs demand non-traditional pedagogy. Their maturity and self-directedness eliminate many concerns often voiced about extending support and evaluation inherent in maintaining quality for and among students adopting Distance Education (DE). In North Carolina, the audience is large and demands that the University reach out to them. Cooperative Extension's more than 120 Horticultural Crops Extension Agents (field faculty) and over 300 other field faculty whose interests include horticultural topics constitute students identifiable as likely enrollments for credit taking hours off-campus. Distance Education can overcome these problems in several ways. First, high demand, low-seat-available classes can offer additional enrollment for credit if open to Distance students. Second, courses can be offered asynchronously or with alternative delivery. Finally, courses offered collaboratively among institutions generate a level of interest and enthusiasm that may not exist for home-grown courses. Such efforts as these are creating a Distance Education program in NCSU's Horticultural Science Department.
This project directly addresses national food safety “priority issues”. Project design incorporates food safety and food chain security as focal points of educational efforts, then initiates practical, producer-level research, teaching, and extension whereby food handling and safety issues are addressed in a systems context. The overall Project goals are (1) to deliver information about Fresh Produce Food Safety (“FPFS”) programs and principles defined in the FDA Guide to fresh fruit and vegetable handlers in the Southeastern United States, (2) to provide hands-on individual state assistance with FPFS program implementation, and (3) to determine the influence of packing line procedures on the survival of foodborne pathogens. Part of the education envisioned under the new grant is introducing the concepts of recall and traceback. These concepts, proposed for incorporation into a new Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) act being discussed for adoption, possibly in 2006, essentially allows for the traceback of food to its point of origin. Osborne and others published a new protocol last month as “Model Recall Program for the Fresh Produce Industry” and want to help growers stay ahead of the curve on these issues. As a consequence of this project, the region's commercial fresh fruit and vegetable handlers will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to establish effective GAPs programs. Developing new GAPs programs to fit the specific needs of the packing and chain store operations in the Southeastern United States can significantly reduce the possibility of illness originating from Southeastern fresh fruit and vegetables. Delivering such programs will serve as a valuable training tool for fresh produce industries nationwide.
Land-grant institutions throughout the US face declining resources in general. Particularly reduced is institutional ability to offer core graduate and upper level undergraduate courses in production agriculture and agricultural science. For example, while North Carolina (NC) State University is still able to offer a wide range of upper-division production courses in Horticulture, many sister institutions are facing restrictions on offerings in Fruit and Vegetable Production and Floriculture courses. New areas such as Sustainable Agriculture and Organic Farming also justify course offerings but few resources exist to create and teach such courses. At NC State, distance education (DE) is able to begin overcoming these problems in several ways. First, high demand, low-seat-available classes such as Postharvest Physiology can offer additional enrollment for credit if open to DE students. Second, courses offered asynchronously or with alternative delivery strategies (such as the videotapes distributed in this course) students having course/time conflicts in a semester can enroll simultaneously in two campus time-conflicted courses, completing both successfully. The framework for the Postharvest course now being taught via DE and how it came to gain institutional support will be discussed in this paper.
Food safety, including fresh produce food safety programming and GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices) third-party audit considerations are impacting the ability of producers marketing their crops. These relatively new federal programs are voluntary, but major buyers and chain stores are beginning to require that growers and sellers demonstrate participation in the programs. Recently, there were no training programs or materials readily available to meet educational needs of Cooperative Extension clients. Local producers began to request information on participation, compliance, and the end results. In Rowan County, N.C., two different programs addressed information and training material limitations for local producers. In one training session, local farmer's market participants were introduced to risk management concepts that helped them meet the GAPs training requirements. In another program, local school personnel were introduced to new food safety concepts in a local training for Hispanic workers. Since translation capability is limited, we have partnered with Spanish speakers from a local bank and from a migrant worker education group. This networking was valuable to our cooperators, since they reached new clients, and to us in getting workers trained in food safety.
One key to protecting the nation's food supply is training packinghouse and field workers in food safety principles. Southern producer/packers are typically grower/packers. Such producers usually are seasonal, have their own packinghouse operation and are small scale. They use migrant and seasonal labor. Also worker training, sanitary practice and facilities are either somewhat limited or completely lacking in such operations. Further, the use of seasonal and migrant labor dictates the use of Spanish language interpreters for training. These trainers are in marked shortage. To help meet this need for trainers and training materials we developed a bi-lingual (Spanish/English) “flip chart” GAPs training aid. It contains 48 charts explaining food safety principles to be considered in the field and in the packing operation. These educational materials can be used by small farmers, growers and packers for training sessions. Such material is particularly useful in preparing for third-party audits.
This paper summarizes the results of a multi-state, multi-institutional partnership delivering a targeted train-the-trainer program. The program provided good agricultural practices (GAPs) and good manufacturing practices (GMPs) based training to southeastern U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable (produce) growers and packers. Twelve southern U.S. states cooperated in this project between 2001 and 2004. In the work 150 trainers introduced nearly 20,000 persons to GAPs principles, including over 2,000 Spanish-speaking workers and a similar number of limited resource/specialty crop/grower/packer/buyer audience members. Actual numbers of persons reached was nearly 20,000, a number arrived at by counting signed-in registrations for events. Cost per person for outreach was about $6.00 per person, including travel expenses. In cooperation with the federal Risk Management Agency, a training component about risk in fresh produce operations was developed. This unit was delivered to historically underserved audiences, small farms and roadside markets, and other non-traditional audiences. This training continues today.
This paper summarizes the management framework of a multi-state, multi-institutional partnership delivering a targeted train-the-trainer program. The program provided Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs)-based training to southeastern U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable (produce) growers and packers. Twelve southern U.S. states cooperated in this project: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The 2000–04 work was funded by United States Department of Agriculture – Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (USDA–CSREES) National Food Safety Initiative grants. This project developed materials, pilot tested them, refined them for use by a regional group of specialized agents, assisted the agents in delivering the new programming and evaluated the results.
This paper summarizes the management framework of a multi-state, multi-institutional partnership delivering a targeted “train-the-trainer” program. Procedures associated with assuring on-schedule deliverables and budget compliance will be reviewed. The program provided Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs)-based training to southeastern U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable (produce) growers and packers. Twelve southern U.S. states cooperated in this project: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The 2000–04 work was funded by U.S. Department of Agriculture–Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (USDA–CSREES) National Food Safety Initiative grants. This project developed materials, pilot-tested them, refined them for use by a regional group of specialized agents, assisted the agents in delivering the new programming, and evaluated the results.
Many potential students, because of distance from the university campus and/or job requirements, cannot take traditional courses on-campus. This group of learners is “place-bound”—a group of learners who may be employed full-time, most likely married with job responsibilities and/or other situations demanding most of their attention. The Horticultural Science Department and Graduate School at N.C. State University are addressing place-bound limitations in several ways, including the creation and offering of a Graduate Certificate Program in Horticultural Science via distance education (DE). By using DE, high demand, low-seat-available classes can offer additional enrollment for credit. Second, courses can be offered asynchronously or with alternative delivery methods. Also, courses offered collaboratively among institutions can generate a level of interest and enthusiasm that may not exist for “home-grown” courses. Such efforts as these promise to help meet continuing education demands of “non-traditional” students. These include Cooperative Extension's more than 120 Horticultural Crops Extension Agents (“field faculty”) and over 300 other field faculty whose interests include horticultural topics.
The software package Macromedia Dreamweaver™ and learning management system WebCT™ are becoming de facto standards used to develop university distance education courses. NC State Univ. adopted these tools as part of its extensive support program for creating new distance courses, transforming existing classroom presentations into distance courses or upgrading existing distance courses. While production tools are becoming standardized, a “standard” course framework does not exist because most faculty believe that “no other course is like mine”. However, initial course placement online and course maintenance thereafter would be facilitated if a standardized course framework could be adopted and widely implemented. We developed such a framework, readily adaptable to many courses, by using the Libraries feature in Dreamweaver™ to create a model for easy navigation and standard course formatting for distance courses. Library items can be easily changed for use in different courses, and the entire framework can then be uploaded into WebCT™ for delivery to students. The model is used for several graduate level horticulture courses at NC State Univ.. Using this framework will allow any faculty member to easily fit his or her course into a replicable framework.