Learning Outcomes of a Blended Learning System for Green Food and Beverage Education

Introduction

Due to global warming and other environmental problems related to consumption, developing students with green eating literacy, responsible environmental behaviors, and the ability to solve dietary problems is a very important goal for hospitality education¹ (Barber, Deale, & Goodman, 2011; Hiser, 2012; Millar & Park, 2013). Wang, Chen, Lee, and Tsai (2013) and Desha and Hargroves (2014) indicated that implementing green food and beverage (GFB) can be a powerful method to alleviate the situation of global warming, to promote food environmental sustainability and to provide economic benefits. GFB refers to applying the concept of environmental conservation to food management processes and increasing emphasis on green food, green production as well as green service which provides customers with healthy, safe, and eco-friendly food products (Wang et al., 2013; Wang & Wang, 2016). Teachers need to improve the effectiveness of curricula implementation and maintain students' motivation to equip themselves with GFB literacy and learn problem-solving skills related to green food and environmental sustainability during their studies. Wang (2015) defined GFB literacy as the knowledge, attitudes, values, behaviors, and skills, which encourage individuals to eat healthy, eco-friendly diets and to engage in actions to promote food production quality and environmental sustainability. GFB behaviors include individual and civic behaviors (Wang, 2015). Individual GFB behavior refers to individual consumer behaviors related to green diets, including the purchase of green food, energy-saving and resource-saving cooking, waste-reduction services, environmentally friendly cleaning practices, waste classification, and recycling (Dabija & Pop, 2013; Singh, Marchis, & Capri, 2014; Styles, Schoenberger & Galvez-Martos, 2012; Wang, 2015). Civic GFB behavior refers to environmental actions related to dining, which address ecological management, actions that attempt to persuade and to take political and legal actions (D’Lima & Suslow, 2009; Styles et al., 2012; Wang, 2015).

In May 2010, the Taiwanese government announced the “Total Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction National Policy.” Among the related initiatives, the labeling program directly related to education mentions “deepening energy conservation and carbon reduction education.” The main goal is to strengthen school energy conservation and carbon reduction education functions and promote energy saving for all. Therefore, the development of national energy conservation and carbon reduction, the cultivation of energy-saving and carbon-reducing industries, and the cultivation of energy-saving and carbon-reducing technology personnel are all important goals for national talent cultivation. Under this national education policy, many scholars in the hospitality education field have begun to develop assessment tools and courses on energy conservation, carbon reduction, and green literacy (Wang, 2015).

Studies on the effectiveness of green or environmental education courses have highlighted the limitations that students have in the development of environmental/green/energy-saving and carbon-reducing literacy (Gigliotti, 1990; Cantrill, 1992). Awareness of environmental knowledge and environmental issues cannot successfully create or promote responsible environmental action, and sometimes the students even experience a sense of powerlessness. Kagawa (2007) pointed out that 77.5% of students believe that environmental sustainability is good, but only 20% are interested in devoting themselves to it because of its feasibility. Hiser (2012) found that the general sustainability knowledge of college students is sufficient, but environmental curricula are not very attractive to them.