Development of an Evaluation Tool for Online Food Safety Training Programs

Abstract

The objective of this study was to provide the person in charge and food safety instructors an assessment tool to help characterize, identify strengths and weaknesses, determine the completeness of the knowledge gained by the employee, and evaluate the level of content presentation and usability of current retail food safety training platforms. An existing evaluation tool was modified to assess online food safety training programs that contained 5 areas of emphasis: content and instruction, learners, job transfer, design and packaging, and operation. Participation included watching 3 food safety training modules and afterwards evaluate what degree the module content met objectives. More than 85% of the participants responded positively to the scale-based items of the course evaluation. Items addressing the content and instruction received positive responses. The assessment tool helped panelists to objectively evaluate an online food safety training program that provided numeric data for a valid comparison. © 2010 Institute of Food Technologists®.