Fashion-Tech Curriculum: a New Framework

The Fashion-Tech Design curriculum for higher education was designed to offer the Fashion and Design Higher Education sector points of convergence, and enable a wide up-take across Europe. The educational resources developed are aimed at HEIs in the European Higher Education Areas (EHEA). In detail, three outputs were developed to contribute to the Fashion-Tech curriculum: the Tuning Document, the Learning Units and the Teacher’s Toolkit. The Tuning Document aims to form a basis for education in the field of Fashion-Tech design. Furthermore, by responding to a market and industry need for hybrid professionals, the document will establish the interdisciplinary education within the field. The Teachers Toolkit aims to act as a resource for teachers with innovative teaching and learning methods and approaches. By complementing the basis for curriculum development defined by the Tuning Document, the toolkit further feeds into the development of the course modules and training units. The Learning Units aim to provide higher education teachers with guidelines for developing courses and programmes in Fashion-Tech. The Fashion-Tech Hackathon was organized as an opportunity to map current levels of knowledge and skills of learners active and/ or interested in fashion-tech. The Train the Trainers short workshop allowed the testing and refinement of the teaching methods identified, adjusted and compiled into a Teacher’s Toolkit for fashion-tech, by the teachers of the project members. The following three intensive programs brought together both teachers and learners from the partner universities to test and refine the proposed fashion-tech approaches at the intersection of smart textiles, digital manufacturing and wearables, in real-life situations. Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) held a 5-day workshop on digital manufacturing, University of the Arts London (UAL) on wearables, and the Swedish School of Textiles – University of Borås (HB) on smart textiles. The workshops were not only the key activities to interact and gain feedback/learn from the learners participating in the project but also aimed to ensure that the courses developed are relevant and transferable to different fields of fashion-tech, different institutions and different regions, ensuring the project results are truly adjustable and sustainable. As all activities had a transnational approach (involving trainers and learners from each of the partner universities), they contributed to the mobility of these participants providing the added benefit of shared learning experiences, greater opportunities for knowledge sharing between institutions and its teachers & learners, as well as for further collaborative opportunities beyond the project. During the pilot workshops, the monitoring process aimed to assess the overall quality and success of each delivered training program. Central to this process it was the use of evaluation forms and questionnaires that the participants completed before and/or after each workshop. The methods were designed to provide accurate feedback and assessment relating to the depth and quality of the material delivered, the relevance of the subject matter, and the teaching practices employed throughout the intensive teaching and learning period. In addition, a peer observation process was adopted within the for the participating teachers. Peer observations offer critical insights into an instructor’s performance and complement the student ratings and feedback forms. Combining both perspectives contributed toward a more comprehensive and accurate representation of the overall teaching quality. Lastly, informal group discussions were held at the end of each workshop to openly discuss and collate any additional areas or matters that they wish to raise or express, which may not be best achieved using feedback forms or questionnaires. The purpose of the units is to provide learners with knowledge, skills and approaches specific to the 3 key areas: Design and Ideation, Technology and Engineering and Human, Social, Psychological and Economic Contexts. The resources are presented in-depth in this chapter, and are free to use and adapt by HEIs within the EHEA, and globally.