GLEAN (Game Learning to Educate and Advance kNowledge): Transformative Food Safety Training for Farmers Market Vendors

The long-term goal of this Collaborative Education and Training Project is to provide transformative and engaging food safety training to local food producers to increase food safety knowledge, elicit behavior change, and prevent food safety issues within direct-to-consumer venues such as farmers markets. This will be achieved through interactive multimedia learning tools packaged within an educational, web-based gaming platform. Importantly, this multimedia training approach is proven to aid in better understanding of concepts and adoption of behavior change. New and beginning farmers and those hoping to manufacture value-added products to sell in local food markets are our target audiences. The primary objectives to achieve our long-term goal are:Identify knowledge gaps in the understanding of food safety risks related to products of local food producers.Utilize science-based evidence and regulatory standards relevant to food safety risks at farmers markets to develop essential content for training tool.Develop a game-based, food safety training tool for local food producers using a collaborative design process.Deliver and evaluate novel Farmers Market Game for local food producers.