Applying Kolb's experiential learning framework to investigate the safety of energy drinks in a critical thinking general education course

Through a collaboration between a professor in academia and an industry professional, entry-level food science students were given the opportunity to critically evaluate the safety of energy drinks. This evaluation occurred through a General Education (Category A3) course designated “Critical Thinking” at California State University – Long Beach (CSULB), where students were introduced to a variety of controversial issues in food science. The goal of the course was for students to apply critical thinking skills to formulate conclusions that are factual, rather than judgmental and biased. Using Kolb's experiential learning framework, students completed exercises in an active-learning classroom (ALC) environment, which encouraged exploration, reflection, and application. For the exploration phase, students were presented with six commercially available caffeinated beverages and were asked to categorize them as “energy drink” or “not energy drink.” For the reflection phase, students were presented with news articles, as well as peer-reviewed scientific research articles. Students were tasked with reflecting on how the information in the research articles confirmed or disproved the information in the news articles. Finally, for the application phase, students were asked whether they believed energy drinks should be banned and why or why not. In conclusion, through Kolb's exploration-reflection-application framework and through the ALC environment, students learned how to use critical thinking to identify fallacies in news coverage of controversial products, such as energy drinks.