Abstract
In recent years, with the flourishing of the catering economy and the trends in computer technology, restaurant operators have increasingly relied on employees with computational and information skills. Breaking through the traditional teaching method of mere lecturing, the study conducts a teaching demonstration by integrating the computational thinking concept and a Microsoft Excel computational system on the school’s E-learning platform into the teaching of a Culinary and Restaurant Management course. A non-equivalent control group pretest–posttest study with a quasi-experimental design is adopted for the assignment of experimental participants and the design of the course. The results show that a curriculum design with computational thinking significantly improves the effectiveness of students’ learning in digital technology and is especially helpful for the cultivation of the key capabilities of menu design and cost planning among restaurant management skills. The study makes the following contributions: during the Culinary and Restaurant Management course, the use of the E-learning platform and computing programs such as Microsoft Excel is associated with greater learning effectiveness than traditional teaching methods. The research results can serve as a reference for promoting an E-catering business model and a sustainable educational model in the future.
Highlights
The results show that, for the 75 subjects (36 in the control group and 39 in the experimental group that received teaching that integrated computational thinking and the Microsoft Excel computational system), the posttest performance was better than that of the pretest and the mean of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group
Students in the experimental group believe that teaching using Microsoft Excel via the school’s E-learning platform can improve their learning effectiveness and the subdimension menu design and cost planning shows the greatest improvement in learning effectiveness
This study infers the following: (1) restaurant operation includes a process than spans from selecting side dishes to designing menus to presenting finished dishes; menu design and cost estimation are important factors for operating a restaurant and attracting customers
Summary
Due to the current boom in the economic environment, market competition and diversified operational strategy requirements in the catering field, many catering businesses have higher expectations of new employees than ever before [1]. In the era of mobile Internet, digital tools continue to emerge and unique functionality has become a major boost in the development of various industries Following these general trends, the catering industry must use the intelligent technology of computational thinking to improve competitiveness, reduce costs and increase revenue. Students are not exposed to the new trend of computing thinking technology in the catering industry, but only learn the cooking skills brought to them by traditional teaching methods They have not learned that using Microsoft Excel computational system can help them use their high-level thinking skills in projects such as menu design and cost planning and food specification computation and help them prepare the basic skills needed for employment in the future. The results provide us a reference for education and training programs for catering educators and catering business operators
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