A Pilot Study to Explore Innovative Technologies to Enhance Food Safety Training

Incorporating technology into food safety training cre-ates opportunities to develop engaging and more effec-tive learning programs. Using immersive and interactive technologies, we developed and evaluated online courses on water quality and soil amendments (available in English and Spanish) and 360-degree immersive tours of a small farm and a farmers’ market. The training tools included knowledge checks, and voluntary post-training evaluation questionnaires to assess intention to change behaviors and satisfaction with the training. The online courses were accessible via the Food Safety Resource Clearinghouse and university websites. Participants experienced the immer-sive tours using a head-mounted display, incorporated into in-person university-sponsored trainings. To evaluate the training tools, we conducted a pilot study (n = 20 online course evaluations and 10 in-person training programs for the immersive tours). Participants reported enjoying the immersive and interactive aspects of the training and the novelty of the tours; however, some experienced tech-nical difficulties and/or issues with using the headsets. Intentions to change behavior was limited because many participants already followed the recommended practices. The pilot study findings suggest that these interactive and immersive approaches to education show promise in future food safety education efforts.