Fifty Minute Classroom

Mar 29, 2024, 15:18
Practical Suggestions for Online Culinary Lesson Planning
2629

Practical Suggestions for Online Culinary Lesson Planning

23 March 2020

Chef Adam Weiner provides 10 more suggestions for teaching online culinary classes without high-tech functionality.

By Adam Weiner, JD, CFSE

CAFÉ’s Gold Meal Classroom is publishing a series of articles on virtual teaching. In the last edition, I provided 10 easy, low-tech ideas to virtually teach your class. Here are another 10 concepts you also might consider:

  1. If you haven’t already done so, you can teach menu either home or commercial planning, food service economics or food costs. All can easily be taught online.
  2. Prepare an online class on visual presentation (see Teaching Presentation Skills in 50 Minutes) and have your students send you photos or videos of their final project. Or, have them post it to an online platform and let others comment. Speaking of presentation skills, teach an online course on how to orally present your food. Have your students make something at home and then make a video or do an all-class conference of the oral presentations.
  3. Have your students edit photos they have taken this semester or class year and make an interview portfolio. (Note, portfolios for entry level cooks should be minimal. A few really great shots are sufficient.)
  4. Teach nutrition. Or better yet, get a guest speaker or two and hold an online panel discussion on nutrition.
  5. Do a review on Reading and Writing Recipes.
  6. Have your students practice grilling with a grill, grill pan or barbecue. Then have them take photos or submit a video to see if their grill marks are perfect diamonds on both sides. You can grill hot dogs, mushrooms, tofu, etc. The ingredients don’t have to be expensive.
  7. Assign and prepare mini quizzes for television shows you find particularly useful. The only one I watch is the Food Network’s “Restaurant Impossible” because Robert Irvine actually goes over restaurant economics, serving, and the high demands of owning a restaurant.
  8. Conduct an online soft skills class that is not directly cooking related, but teaches skills everyone needs to know such as money management, anger management, conflict resolution, how to keep a job, problem solving, etc.
  9. Give a class on pickling and fermenting and then have your students practice the skills at home, keep logs for submission and send you pictures.
  10. Bowls are a hot concept right now. You could teach Poke Bowls or Korean Bibimbap, and have your students write a recipe, make a bowl and submit pictures to you.

Click here to read my first 10 ideas for teaching culinary classes in a distance learning format.


Adam Weiner, JD, CFSE, has been a culinary instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 16 years.