Oh, the things I learned from two years of teaching culinary classes online; reflections, tools, and tips for teaching remotely.

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(I originally wrote this as a reflective practice in April 2021 a year after the global pandemic, but never published it. I decided to revisit it a year later.)

I am a chef and culinary professor at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. I design and teach culinary demos, culinary labs, and sustainability, leadership, and entrepreneurship theory courses. I am an entrepreneur and a former restaurant owner. I live on an organic farm with my farmer wife, our two kids and two dogs. I have been teaching culinary classes online for the last two years.

In response to the global pandemic in March 2020, the George Brown Chef School made the decision to move 100% of our curriculum online to complete the school year.

My first online class was recorded live from my home in April 2020, the laptop is showing my students my first culinary online live demo. The topic was Garde Manger or (cold kitchen dishes): steak tartare, chicken ballotine and chicken liver mousse.

In May 2020 we decided to continue offering 95% of our culinary programs online for the next school year, with a requirement that students would have to complete at least one practical course in person to graduate. Over the summer of 2020, we filmed all the skills we normally teach in class and redesigned our classes to be delivered remotely. In September 2021 we brought all labs back into school and kept theory courses online.?

Offering our culinary programs online meant students could do the program remotely from their homes, and it also offered a solution to international students who were not able to travel or get their visas. All they needed was a computer, a reliable internet connection and a kitchen with a stove, oven, running water and kitchen tools. Some students completed the program without some of these requirements.

Seafood Week. Teaching students how to make Japanese Vinegared Octopus.

Here are some things I learned about teaching and some key pedagogical concepts the shift to online reinforced. I organized my thoughts into three sections: Prior to the first class; The first class; and During the semester.??

Prior to the first class: Tools to design an effective online experience.

• I tried to consider the user experience in all that I created, curated, presented, and expected. I asked myself: what will this look like to a student and how will they interpret it? I made sure that whatever worked on a pc or laptop would also be accessible by smartphone. This required that anything put into a Learning Management System, needed to be tested on a smartphone (since it turned out that many of our students access learning materials through their phones and not their computers).
• ?Communicate, communicate, communicate. Create your communication channels and adhere to them, remind students constantly about classes, class times and locations. In the online sphere, every class and professor is different. Every video conferencing tool is different and has its strengths and weaknesses. I used Blackboard Collaborate, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom extensively as video conferencing tools. I ultimately landed on Zoom for my classes largely because Zoom is the most user-friendly system for accessibility. I loved using Teams because it was the only platform where the conversation could continue after the meeting ended and participants could share files and images.
• ?Turn on auto captions. This is helpful for ESL students, and even for students where English is a first language, if you have an accent, it might be hard to capture a word or phrase. If the internet lags, auto captions will catch what you say.
• Have a backup plan in case your video conferencing system goes down. Be ready to email everyone with a new link location. At the start of each semester, we anticipated New Year’s Eve 2000esque system crashes as thousands of new students logged in across the college and country and now the world.
• ?Recognize that this isn’t your classroom, but everyone’s; make it a welcome safe positive space. Prejudice, bigotry, and sexism exists, take your stance and let students know you are available to talk to if they are experiencing discrimination. If they feel you are the person who is discriminating against them provide resources in the learning management system for them to seek advice. At George Brown College we have the office of Office of Anti-Racism, Equity and Human Rights Services (OAREHRS) to assist with students, faculty and staff who experience discrimination.
• Create an Anti-Racist culture. Here is a list that my friend Sasha Bogin published on 10 Tips and Resources to Develop ?an Anti-racist Classroom that is very helpful in creating a safe space for all.
• Create clear outcomes, deliverables, and due dates. Let students know the value and weight of each assessment. Set these up prior to the first class so students know when they are due and what they are worth. This is good practice so they could plan their semester. ?
• Create clear rubrics for each assessment. Let students know what the expectations are and how not meeting those expectations will be assessed. There is a fair amount of work that goes into creating rubrics but it doesn’t have to be daunting. I start with asking myself, “how can I communicate to students what a perfect assignment looks like?” Then I ask, “what does the opposite of that look like?” Those two questions create the vertical columns of the table. Then I consider how many different items need to be assessed and these create the horizontal rows. The rubrics lead into the concept of standards of quality discussed below. I find it helpful when designing rubrics to reflect on where students struggle and make mistakes and let overcoming these hurdles be the indicators of where to elevate the grades.
• Create standards of quality for assignments or dishes. When students presented their work, I would not just evaluate their finished dishes, I wanted them to be able to reflect on why their work was good or had not met the outcomes. Having standards of quality for a grilled steak meant students would be able to say, “this is excellent work, there are consistent cross-hatch grill marks, you’ll notice there is no pool of blood on the plate which means the steak has been well rested, the colour of the meat indicates that this has been cooked to medium rare.” This was such a key realization for me in helping students develop reflective practices. This is a great tool that I borrowed from the cookbook author Wayne Gisslen.
• Reflection. One of the criticisms we as faculty placed on ourselves for offering culinary labs online was that we would not be able to assess students’ work in the normal way of tasting. This meant we had to teach students how to conceptualize how the final dish should taste and teach them how to effectively communicate what they tasted. To me this was an incredible shift in how I teach. It meant explaining taste and requiring reflection from students on their work and flavour development.
• Provide examples of exemplary work but make it known that copying the exemplar will not be allowed. I used photos and video assignments of my own or of former students to create standards of expectation and to provide inspiration.
• Send students emails prior to the beginning of class letting them know where the class is. Send those same location reminders right before class, and do this for the first few weeks. Students have different professors with different class times, some are asynchronous with no set times. Communication is key. I learned this from my own scramble to find meetings and conferences.
• Set your LMS up with notices, due dates, and clear explanations for your assessments. Use the first assignments to evaluate whether your explanations were effective. I found out quickly when I had to revisit assignment details.
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is so key. It is best if you use the UDL principles prior to designing your curriculum, but they can be added later if need be. These 3 examples do not do justice to the world of UDL, but they are a quick overview.
• Offer multiple means of representation with material such as written transcripts, videos, podcasts, or guest lectures.
• I included family members in some of my classes. Sometimes my wife would taste test a recipe and give me feedback in front of my class.
• I would start classes in the greenhouse and take students on walkabouts around the farm to show them the first asparagus or how garlic is harvested.
• Impromptu help: My 9-year-old daughter joined my class one day to help roll gnocchi and demonstrated skills to live classes. This moved me from the demo professor to the instructor as I evaluated her struggles and added tips to help her; these would become pointers for the students, as these would ultimately become their struggles.

My daughter demonstrating to my online class how to roll gnocchi.

Offer multiple means of engaging learners.

• Use jokes & puns to elicit laughter. (Explanation of puns is necessary to explain language nuances to ESL students.)
• Have guest speakers
• Have students present topics- especially around food there are so many meaningful connections that can be shared from differing cultures when a common ingredient or method is presented.

Offer multiple means for students to demonstrate their action and expression of the material (assessments).

• Is it necessary that a student write an essay to demonstrate they understand the material? Can a video, blog, poster, Instagram post, poem, podcast, or an interview be an alternative means for expression?
• Make sure the assessment is written in a way that makes this inclusive.
• Flipgrid is a great tool that allows teachers to post a small video clip and students can respond with their own video. They can respond to a group and view other student’s videos. It’s a great icebreaking tool, but also a great assessment tool.?

Create how-to videos. Learn how to use the screen recording on your computer so you can talk and walk students through step-by-step instructions of an assignment or website; this can be done in overviewing the LMS or for key class concepts. Post the videos on a YouTube channel. This is a video I created for other professors on how to use Padlet maps as an icebreaker.

• Have both standard and flexible office hours. I held office hours right after class and allowed students to call in at other weekday times.
• I also offered meet and greet lunches where students could drop in virtually for a conversation over lunch.

Creating engagement strategies. This is not a “one and done” scenario but a constant strategy to entice your learners into becoming active learners and not just passive observers. Here are some tools I use; they are all very easy to set up and can be expanded:

• Involve students with survey tools like Microsoft Forms. This is also a great way to incorporate a 1-minute reflective essay, or to ask, “what was fuzzy about last week’s class?” These can be anonymous or not.
• Quick engagements: Zoom’s survey tool is quick and shows results immediately back to the class.
• Online whiteboards or Google Jamboard can be used by multiple users at once to brainstorm or hash out ideas. Charts can be uploaded and marked up. ?
• Breakout rooms are great for building community in smaller groups. Present a pre-set question or problem and give students time to work out solutions. Then have them post their ideas onto a Padlet or report back to the class. Make sure you build time in so that you can join each room briefly.
• Microsoft Teams is an essential for community building, it can also be an incredible tool to monitor teams if teambuilding is an outcome of the course: you can evaluate each team members’ activity and contribution to projects. Teams also has its over live translate option.
• SharePoint or Google suite: great tools for collaboration in the cloud-based environment.
• Mentimeter. I use Mentimeter for word clouds, bar chart surveys or for anonymous feedback. It is easy to set up and free if you use only 2 slides per file. It also has a profanity blocker. I used the example below to create a class manifesto.

• Padlet is a great tool for collaboration. It has interactive timelines, lists, and shelves that you can create or curate. Here I let students post their work for feedback; it also inspired others to see what their classmates were doing. I fell into this as I realized that students were spending a lot of class time asking questions about others’ work. I had to rearrange my lesson plan to incorporate this newfound source of engagement.

• Padlet’s Maps function. I love using this as an icebreaker; it helped me design content specifically to my learner’s geographical location. It also starts great conversations.
• Kahoot is a platform which allows users to create quizzes in a fun gamified competitive review of the content. It has a free version, and you can share with other instructors. You can also use their vast array of stock photos and change the style of their music. During the pandemic I started working with leather and making sheaths for knives. I would offer a sheath as a prize to the student who won the most kahoots.
• Use the chat in the video conference tool to engage students. Ask students to like or give thumbs up to concepts. Post questions that require answers in the chat. I used the chats to monitor involvement and could review participation after class.
• Involve students in the lesson. I would require specific student to have manuals open to read recipes and confirm I included all ingredients while I was cooking. I’d have another student monitor timers.
• Create sign-in sheets where pronouns and preferred names are on option.
• Here is an app called Name Coach that can be used for students to record their names so that others can be pronounce them correctly.
• The power of embedding content. Rather than just sharing links into the LMS I would embed YouTube videos right into the module so they could have a visual indication of the video or playlist.
• Ultimately prior to the first class I want to set students up for success and let them know I want them to succeed. This takes a lot more planning than walking into a classroom and lecturing. I want my students to be engaged and participate. So, I include them and listen to their feedback.?

The first class

• Be prepared, be early.
• I open every class at least 15 minutes early with music, usually something that connects to the topic or day. I encourage students to share their music as well. It starts conversations and sets a calm, welcoming tone. Bob Marley’s “Sun is Shining” is a great way to start the day.
• Land acknowledgements are respectful and necessary. Don’t ask Indigenous students to read land acknowledgments. These are settler obligations. Make them authentic and personal to draw others in and move past the “I’m doing this because I’m supposed to” mindset. Here is a resource from Native Land to find the treaty where you are located.
• Walk students through the online systems. In the online sphere, don’t expect anyone to know where something is if you haven’t shown it to them or directed them to it. I record videos of me walking through the LMS and embed it right at the launch page.
• Introduce yourself and give a biographical overview of your journey. I use a presentation that chronicles my life to the present with connections to the industry and why I am qualified to teach the class. I include humour at this stage and demonstrate that mistakes are a crucial part of learning.
• Start each class with a story that connects to the concept of What’s in it for me? This statement helps demonstrate why the topics are important and how they connect to real world scenarios.
• Monitor your email and communication channels for the first 15 minutes to ensure anyone who is lost can be guided in.
• Call students by the name they want to be called. At GBC students can change their first names to their preferred names even if they have not legally done so yet.
• Build community. There are so many ways to do this. I welcome each student as they arrive by name. And try to build a fun, honest, and respectful environment.
• Create a class manifesto together, rather than dictating rules. Ask students:
• What do they expect of you?
• What do you expect of them?
• What do they expect of each other?
• It starts a conversation and involves them. (I use Mentimeter for this activity)
• Build a culture where students know you want them to succeed.
• One of the most essential tools I use at the start of every course is this question: Is there anything you would like me to know that would help you on your learning journey? I was inspired to ask this question from the EdX course, Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom. I was able to build a connection and help students with issues that ranged from food insecurity to fear of public speaking, or concerns over how others would say their names.

Record your classes. I am a convert; I was worried this would undermine me and be a reason for students not to attend class. However, the benefits outweigh the downsides:

• Students who miss a class or idea due to fire, sickness, internet issues, cyclones, floods, police activity or home issues can watch it again. (All of those examples happened.)
• Students who didn’t understand a concept can re-watch the recording.
• It provides students who are ESL leaners the opportunity to watch the class again if they missed something.
• Students who learn best from observing can re-watch skill demonstrations as many times as they like.
• Share your teaching philosophy and update it yearly as you progress on your journey. Not all students will read it, but those who do read it find meaningful connections in understanding your vision.

During the semester

• Use humor, “dad jokes,” puns and stories. Laughter helps lighten the mood, and helps learners retain concepts. Keep them tasteful and be mindful of offensive exclusive language. I used the following photo when we introduced grilling to the class for the first time. This was a good segue into many different names for grills and grilling.
• Keep checking your class lists for the first few weeks because students who enroll late might not be know where to join. Resend the emails to the class lists to capture late students.
• Be flexible with assignments and due dates but have clear boundaries. I let my students know ahead of time my absolute last day and minute that I would accept any late assignment. I also have deadlines and due dates for entering grades.
• Be consistent. Don’t favour one student over another. If you give a student an extension or an exemption, let them know that it is their one chance and it won’t be repeated. Ensure the rest of the class has the same opportunity.

Keep attendance. I use surveys and sign in sheets to track attendance and follow up with students who miss classes. I don’t call them out, but rather check in. “I noticed you didn’t attend class, I wanted to make sure you are ok and to see if there is anything I can do to assist.” This simple act might call in a student who is feeling overwhelmed from the technology or feel that the class might not be for them. It can help retain students. ??This is also a good way to reflect on your teaching style. Higher attendance tends to mean students are engaged with the class.

• (At GBC, attendance is mandatory in some classes. I keep attendance for both. I use this a reference point if a student needs some extra time for an assignment at the end of the semester. I am clear at the beginning of the semester that I will be more willing to negotiate extensions to students who actively participate in classes.)

Provide feedback. Meaningful feedback is so necessary. Saying “good job” is a compliment, not feedback. Giving a grade without feedback is a rank, not an acknowledgment of what they have done well or an indication of what they need to improve on.

• Sandwich constructive criticism between compliments.?
• Give and feedback and assignments back in a reasonable time.
• Give the class updates on where you are in grading, i.e., “I’m halfway through grading your assignments and I’ll be done the rest in three days. I’m grading in the order that they were submitted. If you submitted late, I’ll be grading yours last.”
• Acknowledge the elephant in the room. Learning can be messy, especially when discussing sensitive topics about race and injustice. As a large, straight white man, I acknowledge my privilege and perceived intimidation as I attempt to create a safe space where students feel safe to discuss triggering ideas or concepts. One of the recipes we teach during sandwich week is Banh Mi, (a Vietnamese sandwich which has its roots in the French colonial occupation of Vietnam). I used this recipe as an opportunity to start conversations about justice and equity. Similarly, during barbeque week, I shared the book, Black Smoke, written by Adrian Miller, which explores the evolution of how American barbeque was shaped from Black cooks and pitmasters.
• Don’t rest on your laurels. Something might be very useful and effective in one class but might be of no interest in another. I had great Flipgrid introductions in one class, and almost no response in another. I found the second class to favour Padlet boards.
• Small changes can create unintentional consequences. Be ready and aware of how the changes are received. (Changing the location of a document might affect how it is linked in the learning management system.)
• If students keep asking the same questions or raise similar concerns repeatedly, it is an indication that something is broken. Can it be simplified, or does it need a clearer explanation?
• Sometimes this is a very quick fix; students can’t find a course manual? Move it to the LMS homepage. Or email it to the entire class.
• Sometimes it takes more work; if a student can’t figure out how to submit an assignment, create a small how-to video.
• Practice new ideas or tech with colleagues first. When we first went online, I practiced Zoom calls with colleagues and figured out how to share screens and documents.
• Be available for other colleagues to practice new ideas or tech with you.?
• Join other professor’s classes and learn from their successes and failures. Being in the driver’s seat looks different from being in the passenger’s seat. One pieces of advice that I give my students is that even terrible jobs or bosses can serve a purpose; reflect on what made them terrible and endeavor to do everything in your power to not repeat their mistakes.
• Take lots of classes, enroll in seminars, learn from others, evaluate their LMS, their teaching styles, their tricks. This will make the user experience you create even better.
• At GBC we have the Teaching and Learning Exchange which provides peer support and many professional development opportunities.
• Contact North which supports northern and rural Ontario has incredible classes in their distance and training network.
• Bonnie Stachowiak’s Teaching in Higher Ed. Podcast is an incredible podcast that covers a range of topics designed to help educators create meaningful changes in their classes.
• Feedback. Solicit it constantly, receive it with grace, share it back, act on it. I like to use Stop, Start, Continue (what would you like me to stop, start and continue doing?). I share the results back to the class and add actionable responses. Through anonymous feedback I learned that I was intimidating to some students. By sharing this back to them we were able to flesh out what made me intimidating and what I could do to be less intimidating. The simple fix was for me to smile more. ?? I have had several meaningful conversations with my students over the years by seeking feedback with grace. Here is a module from the office of Academic Excellence at George Brown College on Feedback. Don’t just do it at the end of a course, you won’t be able to improve issues for your class at that point.
• Use diverse media, materials, experts, and images. Your students might not look like you, but they will appreciate you celebrating people who look like them.
• Connect your class content to real world scenarios. Encourage students to do that as well. I start my online classes by scrolling Instagram for topical examples. I encourage my students to post their plates on LinkedIn or Padlet. I then review them in front of the class and offer feedback. This was a real learning moment for me. As more students started sharing their work, it reinforced how important constructive feedback is. ?
• Give bio breaks. (Remind students to turn off their mics and cameras.) This helps students stretch and move and gives me a chance to tidy my kitchen during live cooking demos or review my lesson plan and scan emails quickly to ensure students aren’t locked out of the meeting.
• Show empathy. Things happen in all our lives. Acknowledge the student issue, don’t judge, or criticize, and offer support and resources where applicable.
• Celebrate celebrations. I try to be mindful of Chinese New Year, Ramadan, Passover, Persian new year; anything that connects to my students and connect them to my class content. I ask students to share upcoming celebrations so we can learn together.
• Celebrate other important dates. For International Women’s Day, I gave a presentation on the Toronto female chefs who I consider food heroines. On Valentine’s day I shared an aphrodisiac menu I wrote for a Valentine’s event years ago and challenged students with counting how many ingredients were aphrodisiacs. ?
• Curate breaks: (make it optional). I share mindfulness mediation, breathing exercises, Himalayan singing bowls chakra tune ups, yoga stretches. Mental health is important. Physical health is important. Students appreciate you sharing with them.
• Invite them to share their resources or mental health tips with you and the class. ??
• Share mental health supports; more and more of our students are dealing with mental health issues and crises than we have seen in the past, simply posting mental health support ?resources periodically can remind students that this is not a stigma, and others have similar struggles. Taking a Mental Health First Aid Canada course can also help turn you into a resource for students who are struggling. I try to post gentle reminders around holidays, midterms and finals, when stress and anxiety tend to be higher.
• Encourage mistakes, own yours when you make them, you are human.
• I remember watching Rob Mumford, lead singer of Mumford and Sons, mess up in the middle of a song. He was so embarrassed that he stopped singing and hung his head in shame. The crowd applauded at the humanity; the band started again from the beginning. I loved it because it proved that they were really singing, mistakes happen, and it won’t be the end of the world. ?
• Encourage cameras to be on. Don’t force it when not necessary.
• We require cameras to be on at set times during classes for purposes of evaluating students. We had to do this to confirm that students were doing the work and not relying on help from parents or friends.
• There has been a lot of debate about the fairness and equitability about this. We recognized this and created options for students.
• Students who were embarrassed of their homes; we did not require to share publicly but gave the option to be assessed in a breakout room.
• Students who had inconsistent internet issues we encouraged to record themselves and share the recording.
• Don’t call out, call in. I had a student join class naked once. Rather than saying, “Mike, you are naked, put some clothes on,” I said, “Hey Mike, your video is on.”
• Use a Moderator. I was teaching demos to 90 plus students for multiple lab classes at a time and having a faculty moderator was extremely beneficial for me and for students, not only so they could monitor the chat and answer questions but also so they could converse and offer their unique industry experiences, photos, opinions, and ideas. The student feedback showed how much they appreciated our interactions. If you do not have a moderator, perhaps have rotating students take on this role. While I was juggling my computer over to the stove to check on a sauce or demostrate how to sear properly, having a moderator say, “ok, just drop the the camera down a bit,” was very helpful.
• Guest lecturers. The online sphere made calling in experts to accentuate classes easier. I would call Chef Ema Constantini into my classes and have her teach me how to role pasta or make gnocchi. This gave students the opportunity to interview the guest and learn from their experiences?

Some funny issues:

• My wife belched, loudly, in the background while I was teaching a class.
• I had a student snore so loudly with his mic on that it interrupted the class.
• My kids got into a huge argument in the background once during a class.
• Asking student’s parents to stop washing their dishes since organizing their time and space was part of their assessments.
• My dogs would bark when a loud car would drive by or come join the class and lick my face, sometimes their barking would cause the online students’ dogs to bark.
• I like to purposefully make mistakes because I see value in teaching how to fix mistakes. A common mistake when students make mayonnaise is they split the emulsion which results in a loose oil and egg mixture, not the creamy emulsified mayonnaise we use. While showing students how to fix a broken mayonnaise I couldn’t get it to break! I had to unlearn what I knew and go back to the beginner’s mind to create a mistake.
• Laugh at your mistakes and show your humanity, students appreciate it.?

Ideas I learned from others that I look forward to trying in the future.

• Create a shared musical playlist using a free streaming service.
• Create a course-specific Instagram account.
• Consider the Upgrading concept championed by Jesse Stommel.
• Design courses using the concept of Positive Point Accumulation by John Boyer.

The Next two books on my reading list:

• Ken Bain’s new book: ?Super Courses the Future of Teaching and Learning.
• ?Sarah Elaine Eaton’s incredible new book: Academic Integrity in Canada; An Enduring and Essential Challenge.

The wonderful thing about this journey is that I will continue to grow as new techniques and styles and involvement continue to evolve. So many of these concepts and ideas came from learning with and from others, and from attending webinars and conferences with a critical design perspective. An unintended consequence of the pandemic is that the shift to teaching online made me a more mindful and reflective educator.

• What things have you learned about teaching skills online?