NFS Professor Earns "Wall of COOL" Recognition

A nutrition and food science professor has won university recognition for his efforts to incorporate technology into his classes to help student learning.

Assistant Professor Gabriel Davidov-Pardo was selected to be honored on Cal Poly Pomona’s Wall of COOL, a competitive award that the university’s eLearning office gives to courses that effectively use technology to aid students’ learning and success. “COOL” stands for “Celebrating Outstanding Opportunities for Learning.”

Davidov-Pardo taught a class in sensory evaluation of foods that employed RedJade, a state-of-the-art, cloud-based software that can be used to design, conduct, and analyze all sorts of sensory tests.

“The software is important because nowadays in the food industry most of the sensory evaluation of food products is conducted using software, so it’s important that our students stay current,” Davidov-Pardo said.

Because the software is cloud based, students can setup the tests and access the information from anywhere, including their homes. The RedJade software is also used in follow-on courses.

A review committee composed of faculty, students, and eLearning personnel also noted that Davidov-Pardo obtained a university grant to support tablets, laptops, and a smart display in class. This allows students to conduct four sensory testing sessions concurrently and more overall sessions during the semester.  

The committee also praised Davidov-Pardo for using the Quality Matters template in Blackboard to help organize content and facilitate student learning. Another element the committee singled out was an extra-credit assignment of having students create videos demonstrating how to use specialized software to set up statistical tests.

Davidov-Pardo and other university faculty who were chosen for the Wall of COOL honor will make presentations at the Faculty Center and eLearning’s major workshop, Online Teaching at Its Best, on March 22.   

Davidov-Pardo is the fourth instructor from the Huntley College of Agriculture to earn the Wall of COOL honor.

Last year, Associate Professor Chitra Dabas from the Department of Apparel Merchandising & Management was selected for the recognition. Dabas taught an advance retail buying class with the active-learning, flipped-classroom approach to her students, where they are introduced to course content at home and practice learning it during class in group activities.

Lecturer Amanda Marsh (’08, ag biology; ’16, M.S., agricultural science) was honored last year for her work with Plant Science 300, an upper division general education course on insects and civilization.

Ron Heimler, an apparel merchandising and management lecturer, was recognized in 2012 for his work on two different courses.