[Robin Long]

Oct 16, 2023: The Future of the Trade

Hello everyone! If you missed this week’s Voc Talk café, here is the summary. You can check out the recording and minutes on the Voc Talk café by Après-cours website!

As a society, we enjoy eating out and having a dining experience and the front of the house staff is an integral part of this. We recognise the need for servers and maitre d’s and we know the transferability of their people, management and sales skills, but as a collective we have a hard time seeing past the perception that being a server is not a legitimate trade, it is something you do ‘while you are waiting for something else.’ We explored some of the difficulties in recruiting students for the program, and some of the innovative program offers centres have tried to increase student inscription. The discussion revolved around programs of study in other parts of the world that combine cooking and F&B, the workforce resolution to have a work-life balance that is very hard to do in the restaurant world, and how the front of the hours curates and creates and experience for the diner. The cultural and social aspect of dining and relaxing is an integral part of who we are as humans, and the desire for this continues to grow even as the workforce struggles to find workers. We finished our discussion with a look at a pilot project with an industry partner and RAC to assess workers and support their missing skills with on-the-job training. This situation could be an interesting asynchronous learning project, lending itself to project funding through a TechnoFAD measure.

Thanks to all who attended for the great discussion, and we look forward to the next session!

📱👩‍🍳 Robin

[Robin Long]

November 6, 2023 Food and Tourism: Are Digital Libraries the Future of Education?

Hello everyone!

Thanks for coming to the Voc Talk Café and if you weren’t able to make it, no worries! You can check out the recording, discussion notes and resources on the Voc Talk Café by Après-cours website page here, and read the session summary below!

Summary

Digital libraries have lots of great features that enhance the learning experience, such as access to a large collection, interactive media and built-in translation tools. In today’s discussion, we explored the advantages of the ckbk platform used by the culinary department at PACC. We spoke about access to hundreds of cookbooks, including the traditional textbook, but with user-friendly features such as translation tools, downloadable recipe files, keyword database searches, and multi-media content. Also, access to both the textbook and a cookbook library acts as an incentive for motivated learners to explore more, without penalizing the learners who are focused on entry-level requirements. The cost for the student is much lower than the physical textbook, and having access via a mobile app means devices can be sanitized for hygiene and food safety protocol. As the department uses this platform, more information will be shared about activity ideas in competencies.

Do you have an idea for a Voc Talk Café discussion topic that you would like to discuss with your fellow teachers across the province? Let us know! We can help you set it up! Thanks to all who participated in discussing this very interesting subject, and I look forward to the next session!

📱👩‍🍳 Robin

[Robin Long]

September 18, 2023

Food and Tourism: Project-based Learning: The Secret is in the Sauce

Hello everyone!

Thanks for coming to the Voc Talk Café and if you weren’t able to make it, no worries! You can check out the recording, discussion notes and resources on the Voc Talk Café by Après-cours website page here, and read the session summary below!

Summary

PBL is about authentic learning – an underlying principle in VT – but what makes it a bit different is that there can be a different focus on the project that is not in alignment with the industry, but in alignment with what the student needs to learn. Eg focus on quality of language in a document.
Student cookbook – multi-competency project that involved students creating and standardising recipes for a service menu that they then put into a cookbook that was sold to the restaurant patrons as a souvenir.
PBL often mentions learning retention, but what was noticeable in this project was student engagement – it was hard, a lot of work, but students were driven to push through the struggle.
Difficult for the teacher – let go of the end result and focus on the student learning.
Sounds great, but how do you motivate students to participate in big projects like this?
In perspective, this project was done at the end of the program and a student -teacher rapport was already established.
As a teacher, the pre-work is heavy. Everything has to be planned out, a back-up plan established and the learning goals and relationship to competency content have to be very clear to the students. In this case, the student had the possiblity to opt out of the project but still do the competency learning.
You also have to let go – It isn’t about the teacher’s expectations, but rather about the students self-appropriation of the result. It might be that their vision of the result is different, but as long as the learning goals are met, that is ok.
Does the fact that it will be shared with the public motivate the students?
For some yes, others no. It can be a source of aniexity, but accounting for that is part of the teachers plan B, C, D…
For some teachers, PBL is more comfortable once they have a rapport with the students, for others it isn’t necessary since they frame it out with Universal Design in Learning (UDL) principles.

Do you have an idea for a Voc Talk Café discussion topic that you would like to discuss with your fellow teachers across the province? Let us know! We can help you set it up! Thanks to all who participated in discussing this very interesting subject, and I look forward to the next session!

📱👩‍🍳 Robin