FOOD2330/2637 - Quality Assurance and Control

SESSION 2, 2006

• Course staff
  
  
• General course information
  
  
  • Outline
  • Course objectives
  • Requisite knowledge and relationships to other courses
  • Target students and career prospects
  • Structure
  
  
  
• Assessment
  
  
  • Weighting of assessment tasks
  • Details of tasks
    • Examinations
    • 'Company' quality assignment
    • Web-based discussions
  
  
  
• Lecture and laboratory program
  
  
• Resources
  
  
  • Texts
  • Other materials
    
    
• Course administration
  
  
  • Attendance
  • Late submission
  • Plagiarism
  • Participation in online discussions

Course staff

This course is coordinated and most of the lectures delivered by Julian Cox, though external guest lecturers will present some topics and case studies through the Session.

Top

General course information

Outline

This course introduces students to the technical (rather than regulatory) aspects of quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC), from the organisation-wide level, through the production environment to the analytical quality assurance/control laboratory. It provides theoretical concepts and practical experience in the design of quality systems, and exposes students to QA and QC approaches taken in food-producing organisations. The course is complemented by Food Safety, which addresses broader industry sector implementation of QA and QC, as well as the regulatory/legislative framework within which QA and QC operate. It also complements Product Design and Dvelopment, as the major group assignments in the two courses are integrated.

Top

Objectives

Upon satisfactory completion of this subject, students should:

• comprehend the concept of quality, the various means to achieve it, and its costs and benefits, with particular respect to the food industry
• understand the approaches, systems, and tools used to assure and control quality
• be able to design systems for quality control and assurance, within a team environment
• have developed or enhanced their ability to work as part of a group or team

Top

Requisite knowledge and relationships to other courses

It is assumed that students will have a basic knowledge and understanding of food processing/preservation principles, as well as one or more areas relevant to the safety and quality of foods, such as microbiology, chemistry, or nutrition. As mentioned above, this course is complemented by FOOD2340/FOOD2647 Food Safety. Where possible, it is advisable for students to take FOOD1390/ FOOD1677 Food Product Design and Development, as the assignments in that course and Quality Assurance and Control can be integrated. However, this is not essential, as students not taking the latter course will undertake the assignment on a negotiated topic.

Top

Target students and career prospects

Today, quality assurance and control are major activities within any organisation, especially those involved in the supply of safe, high quality food. The target audience for this course includes undergraduate and graduate students, not only in food science, but biotechnology, microbiology, chemistry or any area of science, who view a career in a setting where quality assurance and control are important functions (essentially any workplace today!). Those working in the food industry, government agencies, laboratories or consultancy groups may also find this course useful. People trained or educated in the principles of quality assurance and control are in high demand in the food or other industries, in government or other regulatory agencies that deal with food safety and quality at state, national or international level, and consultancy groups involved in the design and implementation of, or training for food safety and quality programs.

Top

Structure

The subject consists nominally of 4 hours/week lecture-tutorials. The current scheduled times for the course are Tuesday 11am-1pm in Biomedical Lecture Theatre F, and 3-5pm in Matthews Lecture Theatre B. In keeping with emphasis on group activity in the course, the lecture sessions will be augmented by check-in sessions through web-based discussions. A further session of two hours will be negotiated with the class if considered necessary. It is expected that most weeks, on average, will involve 3-4 hours of formal contact, with a further two-hour session (if necessary) given over to team meetings and support sessions for the major assignment. An on-line private discussion site will also be available to each group for work on the group assignment. Any remaining classroom workload not used for delivery of lecture material should be devoted to independent study and the major assignment.

Top

Assessment

Weighting of assessment tasks

To pass the course, individual students MUST obtain a cumulative pass mark for the examinations, AND a pass mark for the assignment. The group assignment must be completed to a satisfactory level by the group, as assessed by the academic staff. Each student within a group MUST make a satisfactory contribution toward completion of the group assignment. Each student MUST make at least one contribution to each of the mandatory on-line topics. Further details on the assignment tasks, as well as the obligations of each student, appear below.

Details of assessment tasks

Examinations

The progress examinations, to be held during scheduled class times, will be of 1 hour nominal duration, and will consist of extended short-answer questions, primarily testing assimilation of core content. The final examination will consist of extended answer and essay-style questions, assessing application of QA/QC principles to hypothetical but realistic problems, situations or scenarios. Questions from past exams will be discussed in Week 14 to assist with preparation for the final exam.

'Company' quality assignment

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE??!!

Your group mission, should you choose to accept it (and let's face it, you have to accept it!), is to develop a partial quality system for your hypothetical new food company. The company will be based on the production of either a new food product (for the groups taking Food Product Design and Development) or a food product to be negotiated with me. The company requires you, as a team, to design an ISO or TQM-based quality system, HACCP based food safety plans for its product, and quality systems for its testing laboratory, based on requirements for registration by the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA). For those of you also taking the course Product Design and Development, you will work in the same group, and the quality system will be designed for the product your group is designing and developing. For those taking the course Quality Assurance and Control only, you will work on a food product to be negotiated with the course coordinator.

You will be assessed on the completeness of the system, including a quality manual, a laboratory quality manual, a master registry of documents and examples (REPEAT: examples) of other forms of documentation (including procedures, work instructions, and quality records). Creativity in approach will be rewarded. The project, as in real-life, must be a team effort; evidence that the project is simply a collection of individual efforts, will NOT be rewarded!

As an individual team member you MUST provide a statement of how you participated in the development of the system, and you felt every other team member contributed to the 'mission'. Through this individual report of experience, you (and the team) will also have some input to the final mark for each individual team member. The team can discuss among its members the relative contribution of each. The team can collectively decide that the final group mark allocated will apply to all members. Alternatively, the team may decide (or a collection of individual reports may indicate) that one or more members have made a lesser or greater contribution, and assign those members up to 5% less or additional marks. It is VERY important to note that if you do not make a sufficient contribution to your team's effort, you may be failed in this task and, consequently, the course (this has happened in the past!).

The assignment is due by Week 13, to allow for peer assessment. The aim is to exchange assignments with one other group in the class (chosen randomly, by me), and that group will review your package for informal discussion in Week 14.

This assignment will be graded (i.e. FL, PS, CR, DN, HD) and nominally contributes 30% of your final mark for the course. The grade assigned is considered nominal as the the actual mark assigned is moderated by individual and/or group feedback and to balance individual performance in examinations. Further, the assignment represents workload for the course and, most importantly, a learning activity, engaging you all actively with, for example, quality standards. Making actual use of quality systems standards has proven very useful to a growing number of graduates upon entering the workforce (evidenced by comments to me from such graduates). Finally, remember, as described under Assessment above, that success in the group assignment will not be sufficient for you pass the course, even with a cumulative mark greater than 50%, if you do not perform adequately in the examinations.

Web-based discussions

Although a number of classroom sessions will be quite interactive (I hope!!), additional class discussion will be conducted in WebTeach (technical details will be discussed in the introductory class session). Discussion topics or quiz questions will be posted to the site on a regular basis, associated with specific topics dealt with in the classroom sessions. It is expected that each student will make at least one reasonable contribution to each mandatory exercise to 'pass' this component and, in addition, contribute comments to discussion topics, answers to quiz questions, or both. Feel free to post as many answers or comments as you like! You may also wish to start a discussion or post a question, which also counts as a 'response'. Note that quiz questions will test concepts that will also be tested in examinations, so it really is in your interest to attempt them. The responses will not be graded, as it is impossible to achieve accurate and precise grading. Nevertheless, this task must be completed.

Why, you may ask, do we bother with sites like this? Well...

Do you ever feel like this?

(Thanks to Cheryl Power, University of Melbourne)

The purposes of the site are to:

• encourage extension beyond the material covered in class, encouraging you to think deeply about, and apply theoretical knowledge to specific circumstances
• consider problems of types that might reflect questions on the exams (!!)
• provide a potentially less threatening forum for discussion than the open classroom
• allow students to raise issues with or ask questions of the class (both students and teacher) which they may not feel comfortable doing in the classroom
• to enhance written communication skills, especially among students from non-English speaking backgrounds

Collectively, the site and your contributions to it are thus not really for me, but for you, to develop skills from deep thinking to written communication, and to provide you with insight to the types of questions and approaches to thinking required for success in the final examination (and beyond!).

Top

Texts and reference materials

There is no set textbook for this course, though the following text has been used in the past, and may prove useful for certain topics (copies are available in the Library and some copies may be available from the UNSW or Co-Op bookshops:

A Guide to Food Quality Assurance, J.L. Sumner, Barton College of TAFE, Moorabbin, Victoria

Also recommended:
Guide to Quality Management Systems for the Food Industry, Ralph Early, Blackie Academic and Professional, 1995.

Selected reading materials may be distributed in some classes. Various resources, especially those required for completion of the group assignment, among others, are listed in the Classroom 2000 area of the Food Science and Technology web site.

Top

Lecture Program

Note that, while the lecture topics listed are correct at the time of posting (July 2006), they may be subject to change, and the dates of presentation may change, particularly based on availability of guest lecturers.

Date	Lecture topic
25 Jul	Introduction to the course, course structure, assessment (establish groups) What is quality? Food and quality values (online exercises)
1 Aug	Company quality systems - TQM Total Quality Management (TQM) principles
8 Aug	TQM tools and techniques (small-group problem-solving)
15 Aug	Progress examination 1
22 Aug	Quality Standards - ISO9000 and beyond
29 Aug	Microbiological QC/QA and HACCP principles AIFST PDAG Suppliers Expo
5 Sep	Microbiological QC/QA and HACCP principles Laboratory aspects of quality assurance
12 Sep	Laboratory aspects of quality assurance Criteria - guidelines, specifications and standards, sampling and sampling plans
19 Sep	Quality assurance for in-flight catering (Dr Libby Addis, Qantas Airways) Criteria - guidelines, specifications and standards, sampling and sampling plans
26 Sep	NO CLASS - MID-SESSION RECESS
3 Oct	Quality assurance in hospital-based cook-chill foodservice environment (Mr Paul Pentland, Quality Food Services) QC/QA of microbiological culture media (Dr David Myatt, Becton Dickinson)
10 Oct	Progress examination 2 Cleaning and sanitation.
17 Oct	Design and implementation of a food safety plan - food manufacture (Mr Peter Flick, Birch & Waite) Cleaning and sanitation (continued, if required)
24 Oct	Submission of group assignment for review by peer group Proficiency testing - in theory and practice (Ms Ingrid Flemming, IFM Quality Services)
31 Oct	Course wrap-up Discussion of group assignments

Top

Course administration

Note that many of the administrative policies of the School relating to courses of study can be found on the School site (LINK). That link makes further reference to UNSW policies. Some of these policies are expanded below.

Attendance and absence

The School policies on attendance at classes and absence from or failure to submit assessment tasks reflect the policies provided in the UNSW Student Guide 2005. Students who fail to attend at least 80% of classes may be refused permission to sit for examinations or other forms of assessment. Consideration of non-attendance at classes and/or non-completion of assessment tasks will be given to students who experience genuine and properly documented cases of hardship, such as recent bereavement or serious illness. The process by which consideration is granted is documented in the UNSW Student Guide 2005.

Submission of assignments

Assignments must be submitted by the due date, unless another date is negotiated with the academic coordinator of the course. Assignments should be submitted with a completed assignment cover sheet, available from the Food Science and Technology office, or via the link on the home page of the Food Science Web site. In general, assignments should be submitted to the School Office by 9am on or before the due date, where they will be stamped to indicate receipt and then placed by a member of the administrative staff into the mailbox of the relevent academic staff member. For FOOD2330/2367, given the size of the team assignment and the need for peer review, it is more appropriate to submit during the class sessions in Week 13 for distribution to another group.

Academic misconduct (plagiarism)

Plagiarism is defined as the presentation of the thoughts or work of another as one's own.*

Examples include:

• direct duplication of the thoughts or work of another, including by copying material, ideas or concepts from a book, article, report or other written document (whether published or unpublished), composition, artwork, design, drawing, circuitry, computer program or software, web site, Internet, other electronic resource, or another person's assignment without appropriate acknowledgement;
• paraphrasing another person's work with very minor changes keeping the meaning, form and/or progression of ideas of the original;
• piecing together sections of the work of others into a new whole;
• presenting an assessment item as independent work when it has been produced in whole or part in collusion with other people, for example, another student or a tutor; and,
• claiming credit for a proportion a work contributed to a group assessment item that is greater than that actually contributed.**

Submitting an assessment item that has already been submitted for academic credit elsewhere may also be considered plagiarism. Knowingly permitting your work to be copied by another student may also be considered to be plagiarism.  An assessment item produced in oral, not written form, or involving live presentation, may similarly contain plagiarised material.

The inclusion of the thoughts or work of another with attribution appropriate to the academic discipline does not amount to plagiarism.

Students are reminded of their rights and responsibilities in respect of plagiarism, as set out in the University Undergraduate and Postgraduate handbooks, and are encouraged to seek advice from academic staff whenever necessary to ensure they avoid plagiarism in all its forms.

The Learning Centre website is the central University online resource for staff and student information on plagiarism and academic honesty. It can be located at the following site: LINK.

The Learning Centre also provides substantial educational written materials, workshops, and tutorials to aid students, for example, in:

• correct referencing practices;
• paraphrasing, summarising, essay writing, and time management; and,
• appropriate use of, and attribution for, a range of materials including text, images, formulae and concepts.

Individual assistance is available on request from The Learning Centre.

Students are also reminded that careful time management is an important part of study and one of the identified causes of plagiarism is poor time management. Students should allow sufficient time for research, drafting, and the proper referencing of sources in preparing all assessment items.

*Based on that proposed to the University of Newcastle by the St James Ethics Centre. Used with kind permission from the University of Newcastle.
**Adapted with kind permission from the University of Melbourne.

Participation in online discussions

When participating in on-line discussions, as in classroom discussions, maintain an attitude of respect, and principles of equity and diversity in your postings. Do NOT intentionally post comments that may be viewed as inappropriate by staff or students.

Top of Page