Bloom - Innovative Online Teaching for Conestoga Culinary Students
Conestoga culinary students have the advantage of being able to learn how to provide excellent restaurant service in our own interactive student-run restaurant classroom, Bloom Restaurant. At Bloom, they are given the opportunity to practice providing high-level service to paying guests who expect to be treated to an exceptional fine-dining experience. When the world had to hit ‘pause’ to protect us all from COVID-19, the culinary team was faced with the challenge of how to provide an authentic and meaningful learning experience for students, while keeping everyone safe.
We re-created an authentic Bloom space by taking a series of 360-degree photos of every area in the restaurant. We then developed an animated LEarning Navigation Assistant (LENA) to help introduce students to the basics at Bloom so when they finally were able to be back on campus, they would be familiar with the restaurant space and procedures and could apply that knowledge immediately.
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LENA brings students through tours of the kitchen, instructs in essential procedures, and guides students through a series of reflective questions to check for understanding. She makes gestures, blinks, smiles, and has the capacity to show a wide range of emotions to students as she supports their learning by interacting with the virtual space of Bloom. Students can interact with images of the equipment and kitchen, watch custom-made videos of our Chefs demonstrating key skills and apply their learning to simulations of a real-world restaurant environment.
Bringing the Bloom Experience to Conestoga Students
If we couldn’t bring our students to Bloom, we would bring Bloom to our students! With the guidance of Chef Brad and his team, and our own Virtual and Augmented Reality Lab (VARLab) at Conestoga, we created a 13-module digital learning simulation experience to allow culinary students to experience an orientation to the Bloom space. Students can interactively explore an introduction to the various stations and equipment in the kitchen, established safety procedures, and how they can further their learning to become productive and skilled team members even when in-person learning is on hold.
Each module takes between 15 - 30 minutes to complete. Students must finish all 13 modules before they can proceed to in-person learning. Fast-forwarding isn't possible. A short quiz at the end of each module is followed up with feedback on what they got right or wrong and why.
Once they’ve successfully completed all of the modules, the professor is notified through the learning management system and they can move onto the next phase of their learning. Students can practice safely at home and can review, study and rehearse their skills with the learning simulation as often as they’d like.
Initially imagined as a creative response to having to pivot online, the simulation has proven to be a powerful teaching and learning tool that will shape the orientation experience in innovative ways for Conestoga culinary students in years to come.
