The Northern Crops Institute, located on the NDSU campus, recently held its first fully online course. The annual Pasta Production and Technology course is normally an in-person course, but it was moved to an online format due to the pandemic.

The three-day course ran April 28-30. Participants were introduced to the fundamental and applied aspects of pasta production and quality. The course focused on traditional dry durum-based pasta, but also included lectures on using alternative ingredients and working with refrigerated and frozen pastas.

“It is a great course for anyone working in the pasta industry. Industry experts cover a wide variety of topics, from die maintenance to semolina quality to fresh and frozen pasta. It is invaluable to have experts at your disposal to give advice and help answer participants’ questions.” said Rachel Carlson, a food scientist at the institute.

“This course typically has a lot of hands-on elements, which is why it has always been in-person,” said program manager Brian Sorenson. “It was a challenge to turn it into an online course, but it ended up to be a big success thanks to those involved. Going forward, we still hope to have our traditional in-person courses, but this experience opened the door for us to look into new online opportunities such as webinars and additional online courses.”