Evidence-informed strategies for undergraduate nutrition education: a review

This review focuses on evidence-informed strategies to enhance learning in undergraduate nutrition education. Here, we describe the general shift in undergraduate education from a teacher-centered model of teaching to a student-centered model and present approaches that have been proposed to address the challenges associated with this shift. We further discuss case-based, project-based, and community-based learning, patient simulation, and virtual clinical trials as educational strategies to improve students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills; these strategies are well suited to the teaching of undergraduate nutrition. The strategies are defined, and we discuss the potential benefits to students and how they can be applied specifically to the teaching of undergraduate nutrition. Finally, we provide a critical analysis of the limitations associated with these techniques and propose several directions for future research, including research methodologies that may best evaluate teaching strategies in terms of both teaching and learning outcomes. Consideration of these evidence-informed strategies is warranted, given their ability to encourage students to develop relevant skills that will facilitate their transition beyond the university classroom.