CP901: Enterprising Technology

Abstract

Reference: CP901
Classroom Practice: Year 12/13
Title: Enterprising Technology
Duration: Whole year
Overview: This case study looks at a Food Technology class undertaking a Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) pilot programme – Enterprising Technologies. The Year 12/13 class ranged in ability, motivation, and experience, and ultimately the Year 13 group completed their YES project while the Year 12s concentrated on individual product-development work. Teacher Marietjie van Schalkwyk offered students the opportunity to be assessed for NCEA Achievement Standards or Unit Standards.

Focus Points:

• YES pilot programme – Enterprising Technology
• Developing a product based on previous student investigations
• Intellectual property (IP)
• Client contract
• Mass production
• Potential move from school project to private enterprise

Background

Wellington High School is an inner-city decile 9 school with approximately 1,000 students. Year 9 students take a term each of Food Technology, Design Technology, Fabrics Technology and Graphic Design. Food Technology is offered as an option in Years 10-13, and seniors can choose Hospitality or Practical Food and Nutrition.

Marietjie van Schalkwyk had taught Home Economics for 14 years in South Africa before immigrating to New Zealand in 2003. When she started teaching at Wellington High School, where she first encountered the term Food Technology, she initially focussed on Home Economics-based units. Marietjie made the gradual transition to teaching Food Technology and is now an enthusiastic advocate of the benefits in making that change. See Teacher Talk pamphlet.

In 2005, during a Year 13 Kiwi Bread unit, a group of her students was making rewena (Māori bread) based on urenika (Māori potato). One batch came out of the oven a green colour and they spent some time trying to replicate this without success. The following year two students investigated why and how the bread had changed colour, and developed a recipe for making green bread. In 2007 another Year 13 student worked on developing green bread for mass production. See the Kiwi Bread case study.

Marietjie presented her work in Food Technology, including the Kiwi Bread unit, at the 2007 TENZ (Technology Education New Zealand) conference.

Pre-planning

Marietjie was approached in late 2007 by Janet Hunt of the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) which was trialling an Enterprising Technologies project in 2008. In previous years YES had involved students in Business/Enterprise Studies classes forming a company to sell a product, and this focus of the scheme continued. Enterprising Technologies would be based in Food Technology classrooms and students would work on projects which combined YES with the senior Technology curriculum. One feature of YES projects is that there is often an interesting story behind the product and it was suggested that Marietjie's class work on developing something based on the Wellington High School green bread.

After discussing the initiative with Janet, Marietjie agreed to participate and joined Food Technology teachers from Tararua College (Pahiatua), Hastings Girls' High School, and St John's College (Hastings) in the pilot programme. Marietjie and Rachel Ireland (Tararua College) attended a YES training day in Wellington where they went over the requirements of the scheme. Marietjie notes that YES help and support was only a phone call away.

YES organised clients for the schools - Wellington High and Tararua were allocated Wishbone, a Wellington-based company with a chain of ready-to-eat food shops. Although the two schools worked separately, they attended the same activities or venues so teachers and students did get to know each other.

Marietjie started the year with a combined Year 12/13 Food Technology class of 12 students, who ranged widely in ability and motivation. Some had come through from Year 9 Food Technology, while others were taking the subject for the first time and found it quite difficult picking up knowledge and skills and getting on with the project. Marietjie decided that in order to cater for the diverse nature of the class she would offer NCEA Achievement Standards and Unit Standards – ensuring everyone had the opportunity to finish the year with some credits. Most worked towards Unit Standards and four on Achievement Standards.

The whole class began work on an Enterprising Technology project, and students were divided into two companies based on year level. The Year 12s, however, found the programme more challenging and were not as successful in developing a group business. At the beginning of term 2 Marietjie took this group out of Enterprising Technology and they focussed instead on developing individual projects, which they presented for NCEA assessment. This case study focusses on the second group which named its company Kai Hauora (Healthy Food).

Delivery

Marietjie discussed the Enterprising Technologies scheme with her class, explained that it was centred on the green bread and helped them organise their companies. The class visited the Wishbone kitchen and one of its city stores, where they learnt about the company's processes, the types of food it produces and the typical Wishbone customer. Wishbone co-owner Andrea Gibson-Scarlett gave the class their brief – to create either a healthy snack food or an indulgent treat, and discussed how anything they developed would need to meet Wishbone's existing food standards and suit their current target market, which likes interesting, high-quality ingredients.

Back at school, Marietjie talked about the brief and suggested that as there was no reference to the green bread in it students could base their development on the bread, or not, as they wished. The class researched food trends in bread products currently on the market and, because green bread is based on rewena , also looked at the commercial availability of Māori foods in Wellington. Some students decided to concentrate on the green bread, while others developed different food products.

Consultant food technologist Carol Pound worked with the four Enterprising Technologies schools and visited Wellington High several times, discussing key milestones, products, concepts and themes with the students.

Everyone trialled concept recipes, in which they practised making a range of foods such as focaccia bread or marshmallows, experimenting, for example, with bread types and flavourings, or different flavours and textures in sweet foods. Students then chose a product to work on, and developed their own concepts. Kai Hauora members focussed on a variety of products, including chocolate, rocky-road brownie, turkish delight, pretzels, biscotti and chocolate-topped shortbread with chilli and cardamom, the latter inspired by the student's Indian heritage.

After developing their recipes, each student asked their focus group (a group of friends) to sample the product and comment on it, and modified the recipe accordingly.

Zoe Lloyd and Harry Warring focussed on developing products from the green rewena. Zoe developed breadsticks in a range of savoury and sweet flavours. After feedback from her focus group she decided to develop the sweet versions as biscotti – something that would fit into the Wishbone range and was suitable for mass production.

Harry made pretzels, experimenting with different ingredients, and, based on his focus group comments, adapted his recipe to include a variety of coatings, such as chocolate. After testing his prototypes for volume, shape, flavour and colour, he decided to put the dough through a pasta machine, to ensure consistency of shape.

The Enterprising Technologies administrator had organised a stand for Wellington High and Tararua College at the Wellington Food Show, held at the Westpac Stadium in May, and allocated a half-day slot for each school. This would provide an opportunity for the companies to present their products to an audience expressly at the venue because of an interest in 'gourmet' foods.

At this point Kai Hauora decided that rather than mass produce seven different products it made better business sense to focus on two – Zoe's biscotti and Harry's pretzels. Company members worked during and after school and at weekends cooking the biscotti and pretzels for the show. They received positive comments from those who stopped to talk to them and taste the samples and the customer survey responses gave helpful feedback on how they could further develop the products.

Based on these suggestions, Harry modified his product and created pretzels covered in apricot, chocolate and flax seed. Zoe added fig and walnut biscotti to the cranberry and aniseed version she had already developed, and dipped them in chocolate. During this time the other Kai Hauora members were continuing development of their individual products, work which they presented for NCEA Food Technology assessment as distinct from their role in the company and Enterprise Studies assessment.

All the Kai Hauora members researched factors involved in mass production of food stuffs – HACCP , legislation on food standards and costing of each product. Zoe and Harry did shelf-life testing on the pretzels and biscotti, checking how well the products would last in terms of taste and health and how long the green biscotti would retain its colour.

Packaging, an important component for a gourmet product, had to fit the Wishbone 'look'. The company decided to wrap the biscotti and pretzels in clear plastic, to match the Wishbone food presented in see-through containers. One company member with skills in design made up the business cards, labels and stickers based on a kiwifruit motif. The group used FoodWorks software to work out the nutritional make-up of their products for the nutrition information panel.

After modifying their products, Kai Hauora presented them to Wishbone and YES. They were pleased that Wishbone liked the recipes and had only one recommendation - that cost is a lower priority for their line of food so they prefer better quality ingredients. The students took this advice, investigated alternative 'quality' ingredients, and replaced some of the ingredients chosen on price, such as the chocolate, with a product that tasted better.

The company also surveyed some Wishbone customers, to gauge public reaction to their adjusted recipes, and got a positive response from people tasting their food. They then went into bulk production of pretzels and biscotti for the YES trade fair at Porirua Mall, at which they made $200 selling their products to local shoppers. They had also sold some items to teachers and students at school but, due to the time commitment in producing stock for the trade fair, did not follow up on this market.

The class had discussed intellectual property (IP) issues during the year and this was reflected in the contract Kai Hauora signed with Wishbone, which asserted Harry and Zoe's rights to the IP on their products, and allowed Wishbone the option of purchasing the concepts at any time until the end of the year.

Outcomes

The students found the Enterprise Technology work very rewarding and learnt a lot about the commercial aspects of a food technology enterprise. Zoe and Harry both commented that they were pleased with their outcomes and what they had learnt during the year, although they had found it a difficult balance at times as they worked on their Food Technology assessments as well as the YES side of things. Because they hadn't done Enterprise Studies work before, they had to learn about all the management processes involved in an enterprise project, from writing a business plan to taking minutes at every meeting.

Zoe Lloyd: "Food Technology is about developing products, coming up with your own ideas and justifying them in your bookwork; I've enjoyed Food Technology because it is interesting going through the whole process".

Harry Warring: "I've found it good being able to take something from an idea into the mass production stage and actually selling it, taking it all the way through the different stages of production".

Marietjie is happy with the quality of Kai Hauora's final outcomes and pleased that the students were rewarded with media interest in their work. Wellington newspaper The Dominion Post featured the company in its Success page and Zoe was interviewed by Radio New Zealand about the project.

Wishbone liked the biscotti and pretzels but decided that they would not take up the contract option to buy the concept.

What next?

While she is pleased with Kai Hauora's success, Marietjie says that the students had to put a lot of work into the enterprise, and that possibly a scholarship opportunity was lost because of that. She would be happy to work on an Enterprising Technology project again, but would want to do it in a different structure. She suggests that it would be better done as an Enterprise Studies project where she, as a Food Technology teacher, would work with the Enterprise teacher to provide the support and workspace students require to develop a product. She thinks this could be achieved successfully in a team-teaching situation in which two classes could run simultaneously, with the Enterprise Studies and Food Technology teachers sharing those classes and teaching their areas of expertise, and assessing students under Enterprise Studies NCEA standards.

Marietjie has left the classroom temporarily and in 2009 is working at Massey University Wellington and Palmerston North campuses on a New Zealand Science, Mathematics and Technology Teaching Fellowship. The focus of her fellowship is product development - she will be looking at the food science involved in this and developing experiments suitable for using with Food Technology classes.

Harry is studying engineering at Victoria University and Zoe, who was awarded a Weltec Secondary Schools Scholarship, is working towards a degree in catering and a career as a chef.

In early 2009 the pair had developed a business plan to restart Kai Hauora and sell their pretzels and biscotti, to fund their tertiary study. They met with Marietjie to discuss the possibilities and practicalities if this went ahead, and she enthusiastically supports their proposition. "This is a concept that has got potential, and I'll buy into the business if that ensures it goes ahead".