Beyond the Classroom: Practical Application of Sensory Evaluation in Product Development and Market Strategies

The current dynamics, characterized by technological advances, socio-economic transformations, and global challenges, demand swift responses in the educational realm. Those changes prompt an examination of the relevance of the incorporated knowledge in curricula, aiming to select the most pertinent elements that best support the student's academic profile. Sensory evaluation (SE) is a subject that is becoming more relevant in the training of food engineers since it allows the food product development process to be objectively guided. In the design of the SE class, the challenge is to select the contents and teaching methodology that allows students to have a comprehensive vision of this science, acquire useful knowledge and be able to use it for decision-making during the challenges of food product development that they will face in later semesters and their professional life. A selection was made of the most relevant topics that best supported the development of food products, and it was defined that the didactic technique of case studies was the most appropriate for the class. A case study was structured to allow the knowledge to be incorporated in a natural and organized way in the time available for the class. Care was taken to present SE as a science with theoretical foundations and specific procedures statistically validated rather than a compilation of techniques. It was also sought to incorporate into the teaching process the ethical elements associated with the exercise of the SE studies. The study showed that the selection of topics and teaching strategies were appropriate since the students were able to collect reliable data through the rigorous application of SE techniques and were capable of making informed decisions during the development of a challenge faced three semesters after taking the class (seventh semester). It was observed that a deeper review of the principles and applications of the JAR (Just About Right) optimization test is required since it was the test in which the students showed the lowest performance while solving the seventh-semester challenge. To improve the study, it is suggested to incorporate SE specialists to evaluate the seventh-semester project to obtain more discriminative and rigorous results regarding the subject's learning and the development of the food product development competence.