MASSACHUSETTS
FOOD HANDLERS CARD

I love food

Easy

excellent

good

bit of a hefty final exam, but if you paid attention you should do good.

Most of what follows is things I feel could be improved upon, but which largely don’t negatively impact the overall effectiveness of the course.

Technical issues:

– Variable audio between video segments, usually within a similar level, but occasionally drastically quieter

– Not all videos had closed captions, which is a vital tool for folks who may be hard of hearing, or who process information better when read over heard

– Volume and closed captions settings did not carry over between videos, this is minor, but it is frustrating to turn it up and enable CC on every single video segment

– I did also notice on a couple of the videos the controls for pausing/playing, volume, and closed captions moved to different places.

– The videos did a have a delay for me, but not too significant, however I feel this could be streamlined a bit better. I’m assuming the delay is due to a back end process first checking if you’ve completed the prior module and then initiating the process to load the video. Something which could be done to help improve the loading speed is having the video quality reduced to about 720p(assuming they’re not already), since most of the modules videos contained still images or infographics which wouldn’t be drastically negatively impacted by a lower resolution and they’re all pretty short and less than 5min which should mean the video files are small in size and they load swiftly.

Content:

– One of the first questions about High Risk Populations for foodborne illness was badly worded, the question “Which of the following groups are at a high risk of getting foodborne illness? click on each one to learn more” -> this implied that only the groups at higher risks should be selected, but the module actually wanted you to click on each group to learn more about them and their individual risks of foodborne illness.

– The Handwashing segment and steps I felt would have been better if it instead cut to segments of a video playing which demonstrate visually what was needed for each step rather than watching a video first then looking at simple infographic images. Or perhaps talked the steps in the handwashing process over the handwashing video shown initially.

– The segment on personal hygiene’s cartoon example, I felt dipped into over exaggeration and was poorly worded. The directions afterword’s felt ok, but during the video the comments “looks at your uncombed hair” and “she pinches her nose because you obviously didn’t shower” aren’t great. Instead if you have to keep the comments about hair and not showering, I’d recommend changing the wording to something closer to “concerningly unexpected and/or unpleasant odors” or “concerningly unkempt appearances”. Reasoning is, otherwise this really only applies to the beginning of a shift and to those not working in hot or fast paced areas of the food service/restaurant. Honestly though I’d just remove the cartoon animation from that segment, I can see the intent of a “this is why these things are needed” example, but if its removed it would reduce the overall time of the course and its removal doesn’t hamper the information which is needed to get across.

– Generally I felt things could have been a bit more succinct, there were a number of places where information was reiterated without significant changes or additional surrounding information. I realize some of that could have been for the sake of emphasizing, but if reduced, the modules time could probably be reduced by about 10-15minutes at a rough guesstimation.

– Something minor is the temperature ranges change a bit based on altitude(atmospheric pressure), temperature, and humidity making the boiling point of water vary depending on these factors and isn’t always exactly 212°F.

This course gives good examples of situations on real life and helps comprehend