By Jason Keddie and Marshall Hartlen

What we investigated:

We looked into the history of coffee production, ranging from the origins of coffee in general, to the nature of the industry today including popular coffee production countries, and the fair trade coffee movement.

What we found:

There was no shortage of information on the subject. There are numerous news articles about coffee production, its origins, and its socio-economic impact. However, finding consistent information about the true origin and timeframe was difficult due to multiple opposing views, and a general lack of what would qualify as reputable scholarly sources. In general, we surmised the following based on critical evaluation of resources and cross-referencing of what we deemed to be reputable sources.

• Coffee probably originates from Africa (Ethiopia to be more precise) some time around the 9th century CE
• There are primarily two types of coffee beans marketed in the world today: more expensive and milder arabica beans, and stronger cheaper robusta beans (Marshall infers that the milder tasting yet intensely caffeinated Tim Horton’s blend is likely made from robusta beans, though this could not be explicitly confirmed)
• Five countries make up to 80% of global coffee production, with Vietnam among them being a surprise newcomer having specialized in the cheaper robusta bean
• The coffee plant was not endemic to South America, and was probably introduced sometime in the 1700’s
• The fair trade movement, is not particularly fair in how it awards its certification to farmers, and may actually result in lower quality coffee being marketed

Confidence in the abundant content around our topic enabling us to learn about it:

Since the coffee industry is so prevalent there is abundant information about it. The main challenge in learning about the coffee industry is finding reliable sources and determining which sources are reliable. Certain fallacies such as coffee being the second largest commodity after oil were commonly seen and allowed many sources to be quickly rejected, but one must exercise critical thinking and a bit of sleuthing to learn fact about the coffee industry instead of falsehoods.

Was abundant content enough:

The amount of content was more than sufficient to gain some knowledge of the topic. However, the ability to verify the validity of the content requires effective research, media literacy and critical thinking skills. The ability to detect bias and confirm accuracy are essential to digital learning. With the overabundance of content available, the manner in which it is accessed, and the number of people accessing it, gives rise to new tools for learners to educate themselves. According to Weller (2010), learning and knowledge exists through the diversity of opinion, and learning to disseminate incoming information is foundational to learning in a connectivist manner. Engaging with the content then, is not enough. Exploring opinions and engaging with other learners regarding content through a variety of media will help to validate the learning experience.

What do you need to make use of the content:

With such a large amount of content accessible, it is important to narrow and clarify the focus of the research. To avoid wasting time going through low-quality content it is useful to gain a better understanding of what sources tend to be more reliable and how to quickly search for content from these sources.

Imagining ourselves as the instructors, we would want students to be equipped with the same skills to search through the abundant content and be able to find reliable content meeting their needs.

Ways we can make use of this content:

If we were instructors trying to make use of this content we might have students write short historical summaries of the coffee industry and then have the students review each other’s work, challenging each other’s falsehoods with references. An activity like this might show how easy it is to accept statements as fact that commonly appear in the literature but are provably false. This learning activity design would encourage students to construct their own understanding and validate the results through social negotiation which, according to Ertmer and Newby (2013), are basic principles of the constructivism learning theory.

References

Ertmer, P., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.

Weller, M. (2010). A pedagogy of abundance. Spanish Journal of Pedagogy.  249 pp. 223–236.