The first workshop aimed for teaching staff took place at Do Tank, at the Textile Fashion Centre in Borås, Sweden, between 26-28th February 2019.
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The participants of the workshop were 15 teaching staff members from the partner universities with a variety of backgrounds, from design, technology and engineering, to initiate transdisciplinary collaboration and test and refine an intellectual output of the project.
The participants were given the task to develop a fashion-tech course on a masters level within the directions of design, technology and engineering, and entrepreneurship, which create the main focus groups of the curriculum.
The aim was to test and refine the Teacher's Toolkit, which is the next intellectual output of the project, providing teachers with a set of appropriate methods and approaches to teaching and learning of fashion-tech. Consisting of different tools, such as workshops, work-based learning and interdisciplinary group work, the toolkit aims to guide and assist the teachers through open and collaborative practices to offer fashion-tech education within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).
Through testing the toolkit in a real-life scenario, the teaching staff was prepared to deliver the intensive study programmes for higher education learners to test the novel approach to teaching and learning in further workshops, as developed by the project. As the participants and other teachers within the EHEA are encouraged to implement the toolkit in their work, it is expected to impact a wider audience of students to inspire them to pursue the fashion-tech field, focusing on topics such as smart textiles, wearable technologies and digital manufacturing.
The next step is to refine and finalise the toolkit based on the workshop results, feeding into the development of subject-specific course units and learning objects specifically created to cater the needs of fashion-tech learning. Later on the curriculum will be tested and refined in real-life situations to ensure that the developed courses are relevant, transferable and sustainable.
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See what happened during the workshop and how the participants feel about their aspirations in teaching fashion-tech.