SOME VIEWS ON TEACHING FERMENTATION TECHNOLOGY

Fermentation technology is an important subject on the university or college curricula that often sits in the curricula of courses such as chemical engineering, biochemical engineering, bioprocess engineering, biotechnology, food technology, pharmaceutical technology and microbiology.

There are a number of key points in teaching fermentation technology as a subject:

1 Fermentation technology is an applied hands on subject. This means that it is a course which rely strongly on the practical side and involving many hours exposed to working with the fermentor and its ancillary activities
2 This means also that any courses offering fermentation technology must be willing to invest heavily on capital equipments such as fermentors, autoclaves and many down stream activities
3 That there must be an ideal ratio between the number of students per fermentor. The ideal number would be around 4 to 6 students per fermentor. Higher number of students would not ensure each student would have sufficient "clinical experience" with the fermentor.

Fermentation technology is not a subject which the students can learn just by memorising drawings or fermentation processes on a white board or using over head projector. We learn fermentation technology by passing through various mistakes and through experience with the fermentor

There is a requirement of manual dexterity and skill to be trained and acquired by doing the practicals

4 The fermentation syllabus is not merely taking chapters of microbiology, biochemistry or biochemical engineering books. If such an option is taken the it will not make a fermentation technologist out of the student. Selected topics must be taken from relevant fields and wholesomely integrated from the point of view of the interest of the subject of fermentation technology. And to see how this relevant chapters are applied in the course of fermentation technology

The stress on the subject of fermentation technology shall be that at the end of the course the students will not only learn how to run and operate a fermentor successfully but would be able to optimize the fermentation process and carry out trouble shootings and remedial processes for the fermentation system

Field trips to various fermentation industries form an essential components in the teaching of fermentation technology. However, the purpose and the objective of such field trips should not be similar to guided tours conducted by the factories for layman visitors. The students should be exposed to the inner workings of the fermentation industries and the problems and solutions faced right from upstream to downstream activities. There should be brainstorming sessions between the students and the technical or production staff of the fermentation factories.