Use of a Stakeholder-Driven DACUM Process to Define Knowledge Areas for Food Protection and Defense

Abstract

One of the important areas of vulnerability that has been repeatedly identified following the events of September 11, 2001 is the potential for an intentional attack on America's food supply. Despite the importance of equipping professionals to protect our nation's food supply, educators face a scarcity of information on which to base food protection and defense curricula and training development efforts. This research sought to identify a set of knowledge content areas required by food protection and defense professionals. A Developing A CurriculUM (DACUM) process was employed to create a job task analysis that identified duties, tasks, steps, and associated knowledge, skills, and abilities for this occupational category. The knowledge areas identified during the DACUM process and validated through a stakeholder survey were used to frame the program for a training workshop and computer simulation in which participants responded to a mock intentional food contamination event. Results of this process can serve as foundational elements that can be shaped by instructional and curricular design experts to create educational programs in food protection and defense for graduate students and in-service professionals.

Identification of Core Competencies for an Undergraduate Food Safety Curriculum Using a Modified Delphi Approach

“…The National Research Council (NRC) () report entitled, Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World , highlighted the role of faculty and stakeholders as being an important element in curriculum development. Linton and others () performed an occupational analysis using DACUM in which an expert panel, working under the guidance of a trained facilitator for 2 d, identified a set of knowledge content areas required by food protection and defense professionals for application in professional workshops and graduate‐level courses. While DACUM is known to be effective in identifying specific job tasks or occupational analyses for further development of curriculum, that is, training material, competency assessment, organizational restructuring, to name a few, it must be noted that the investment required in time and staff may present itself as an obstacle (Witkin and Altschuld ).…”

“…There are few undergraduate degree options with a specific focus on food safety, and a lack of uniformity in defining critical aspects, including competencies that can be used as the basis of a food safety curriculum (Linton and others ; Wachenheim and Beauchamp ). Curriculum development is often times a subjective process in which the academic institution or instructor bases the content of courses on what he/she has the resources to provide or what they consider is important to include within a course (Linton and others ). A number of techniques have been used that are generally associated with the competency‐based approach to curriculum development.…”

Strengthening Higher Agricultural Education in Africa

“…The interview is structured to gather information that will be used in subsequent analysis of the skills, knowledge, and attitudes required for successfully carrying out each task. Though DACUM has been most widely used by TVET institutions, it has also been used by universities for developing undergraduate curricula on agricultural engineering, food safety, horticulture, and other disciplines (Brumm et al 2006;Linton et al 2011;Halbrooks 2003). Other approaches, such as the Delphi method of data analysis, have also been used for occupational analysis for university agricultural curriculum design (Simon et al 2005).…”

Securing the food supply chain: understanding complex interdependence through agent-based simulation

“…Originally developed at Purdue University [18], the Food Defense Simulation (FDS) is based on the Reference World Information and Simulation Environment (RWISE) platform. RWISE platform provides an agent-based modeling environment that faithfully mimics the dynamics of the real world.…”