Teaching food biotechnology in a university engineering program: blended and in-person approaches in Ecuador

Food biotechnology is a modern science that generates interesting goods and services for society, it is part of the curriculum of agribusiness engineering careers in Ecuadorian universities. The objective was to determine the influence of the teaching system (in-person and blended) on learning levels. The sample consisted of four hundred students of the fifth level of the aforementioned career, divided into 8 different academic semester periods, during 4 consecutive years (2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021), four in an in-person system and four in a blended system (in-person and online) of an Ecuadorian public university, through a quasi-experimental type of research. The evaluation was carried out using both the grade records obtained by the students, as well as the application of a theoretical and practical test at the end of the course. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and a Student's t-test (P≤0.05). It was found that the in-person education system allows 72 % of learning of Biotechnology knowledge while the blended system improves it by up to 86 % with statistical differences between them, so Biotechnology is better understood and applied through a blended system of education.