Delivering remote food engineering labs in COVID-19 time

[Display omitted] •4 remote food engineering labs were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.•6 lecturers, 1 pedagogical engineer+the technology platform manager were involved.•Various resources, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, were developed.•The experience was satisfactory in general, despite time and stress difficulties.•Recommendations for good practices and pitfalls to avoid for the future are made. The impromptu closure of schools and universities and the strict lockdown decided by the French State in March 2020 forced us to find -urgently and without preparation- alternative solutions to conventional face-to-face teaching. Due to their experimental nature, the transposition of labs on pilot plants was particularly challenging. Despite this inherent difficulty, we succeeded in implementing a remote educational device within a few weeks, designed as a viable alternative to conventional food engineering labs for Master level students. Four engineering labs (corresponding to four unit operations widely found in the food industry) were transposed: appertization of cans; concentration in a falling film evaporator; frontal filtration in a plate filter; and spray drying. In the remote labs, hands-on experiments were replaced with various types of virtual tours of the equipment, a detailed description and illustration of its operation, and analysis of real data (previously collected). Evaluation was done via individual quizzes (counting for a small part of the mark, because their aim was above all formative), individual and collective written reports and an individual online oral exam. The teaching team comprised six lecturers, one pedagogical engineer and the person in charge of the technology platform, who also had long experience in distance learning. This experiment took place in the second half of May 2020, with approximately thirty first-year Master students. The effectiveness of the implemented system was evaluated through direct observation and discussions, marks obtained by the students and an anonymous survey. This teaching experiment presents certain flaws induced by the very peculiar conditions of its conception (short time frame, no direct access to the pilot plants). While an “all-digital” approach is not our ultimate aim for these lab sessions, where handling and testing are inherent to the learning process of the student, the educational resources deployed here can be seen as a great incentive to further develop hybrid teachin