How a Nutrition Class Became One of UT’s Most Popular

When students enroll in courses a few weeks from now at The University of Texas at Austin, one highly popular course on the menu will have recently surpassed a key milestone. In just four years, more than 20,000 students have opted for this specific class.

Most have never stepped foot in classroom to attend.

The NTR 306: Fundamentals of Nutrition in-person course has been offered for a lot longer than four years, but in the fall of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing and most in-person classes remaining online, Michele Hockett Cooper and Heather Leidy, both professors in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, took on the challenge of co-teaching nearly 1,000 non-nutrition majors about nutrients and their impact on health and well-being, all online and live-streamed from the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS) studios in Mezes Hall. 

“We knew it would be popular, we just didn’t know how popular,” Hockett Cooper said.

This spring, they have more than 2,000 students enrolled.

Asjad Siddiqi had finished his sophomore year as a neuroscience major when he took the course over the summer. 

“I wouldn’t say that I cared very deeply about nutrition before I took the class,” Siddiqi explained, “but the way it’s taught, it pulls you in. The instructors are engaging, and it makes you very excited about the course material.”

Leidy describes the course as an “introduction into what nutrients are, how they impact health and well-being, and how to establish a healthy dietary pattern that’s personalized for each student.”

“Most students are highly interested in nutrition as it relates to health, sports, or just food in general,” Leidy said. “Plus, they hear so much on social media outlets about what we should or shouldn’t eat, they come in already interested. Given this interest, we can weave in the scientific concepts, how to interpret scientific evidence, and how dietary recommendations are made. In my opinion, nutrition is a great way to teach scientific concepts and principles in a very practical, everyday manner.”

When the instructors began teaching NTR 306 online, courses like it were still fairly new. Students were just happy to have any interaction given the COVID-19 pandemic, Leidy said, but over time, students began to expect more engagement.

In response to student feedback, Hockett Cooper and Leidy created interactive short segments within each lecture. Some of these include “In Real Life” segments where the students find them walking the aisles of H-E-B, discussing post-exercise nutrition in Leidy’s garage gym, or having their children engage in tastes tests, comparing milk and milk alternatives. There are “Ask the Dietitian” segments where local dietitians give their insight on popular diet trends and a “Things that Make You Go Hmmm” segment that breaks down nutrition myths.

Between videos, live question-and-answer sessions and thought-provoking presentations, the instructors, along with a small army of teaching assistants, keep their online students attentive, peppering classes with live online polls and lively chats. Throughout the semester, Hockett Cooper and Leidy have debates about controversial topics related to current recommendations, supplement use and whether animal source foods should be eliminated from the diet.

“Students feel like this information helps them in their daily life; in fact, some have stopped us on campus to say they this class is so meaningful, it should be a required course for all students,” Leidy said, “and that’s why Michele and I love teaching this.”

Hockett Cooper and Leidy give a huge amount of credit to the LAITS production studio crew and Canvas-integrated technology for elevating the aesthetics and engagement piece. 

“Most students say that every lecture feels like a TV sitcom with how professional everything operates and looks when they are live streaming,” Leidy said. 

Food, nutrition and diet can be sensitive topics, especially on a college campus. Concerns span from increasing obesity rates and new weight-loss medications to ongoing concerns about eating disorders and popular diet trends on social media platforms. For college students issues like healthy eating on a budget also register high in importance.

“We address many of these topics in a very thoughtful manner, always relying on scientific evidence and nutrition principles while translating the information to practical guidance,” Leidy said.

At the end of the course, the instructors hope that their thousands of students will critically evaluate all popular diet trends and compare them to the existing dietary recommendations and scientific evidence and leave with a better understanding of how what they eat affects their health and well-being. 

Some students even walk away with a new major. After taking the class, Siddiqi became a nutritional sciences major. The senior hopes to go on to medical school and felt nutrition would give him a practical foundation for his work as a physician. 

“Nutrition is a lot more real world and clinical and I get a lot more opportunities for hands-on learning,” Siddiqi said. “I feel like everything you learn in class can be applied to the real world.”

Eliezer Lee was a freshman with an undeclared major when he took the course and also says the course was the reason he became a nutritional sciences major. 

“College is about furthering your education and pursuing something you’re interested in,” said Lee, who also hopes to go into medicine. “I think there’s a lack of nutrition education at all levels, and a lot of health problems stem from poor nutrition. So, in this way, knowledge is power.”