Our project was aiming at designing new methods for teaching fashion related topics, at proposing new teaching tools and approaches based on the specialisations of the three universities involved: heritage for Erasmus University Rotterdam, sustainability for Paris Dauphine University, and entrepreneurship for Gdansk University of Technology. However, while the selected topics are not unknown to professionals, academics, and the wide public (including customers, especially those aware of issues connected with the fashion industry), they are rarely deployed within the academic teaching process.
Therefore, the project partners idea was to provide students, in their master curriculum, with the possibility of reflecting more deeply on each of the challenges and being more creative when looking for solutions. This intellectual immersion has been possible due to the new (in this particular case and not in absolute) pedagogical methods adopted, and particularly case studies, in situ observations, challenges and business models for the new fashion ventures.
The “Heritage and Fashion” course has been delivered at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, in very close cooperation with European Fashion Heritage Association (EFHA) and RSM Case Development Centre. Using cases in the teaching process gives students the ability to understand different situations in different manners. As the case is rich in details, it allows for learning not only theoretical but also practical concepts in different case situations. It represents an exciting approach to teaching, which can help students take more responsibility for their own learning, both inside and outside the classroom.
In “Heritage and Fashion” course scenario, the writing cases process has been transferred to students. So their responsibility for the content of their learning increased substantially in comparison to the traditional case study method. In the first step, students received training on how to write cases. Later, they were introduced to the challenges faced by EFHA members. Based on that, they could work in groups on developing their own case studies, bringing relevant and scientifically founded solutions. All the educators were surprised by innovativeness of the proposed solutions.
The course dedicated to the “Sustainability in Fashion”, delivered at Dauphine University involved a long list of fashion designers and other fashion industry professionals, bringing to students a wide perspective of sustainability challenges of nowadays design. The exposure to the challenges related to the sustainability through the “in situ” observations, and in particular the visit to the production sites of Le Coq Sportif (the official partner of Dauphine for this particular course) gave students a much more vivid perspective and the possibility to discuss this topic with many actors. This wide view enabled students to give very innovative answers to the confronted issues (group work) and to reflect individually about the key learnings of the course.
The last but not least pillar of the educational proposal, the course on “Entrepreneurship in Fashion”, delivered at the Gdansk University of Technology, has been developed in partnership with the marketing agency You’ll, a firm experienced in promotion of new and already established brands, looking for some novelty. After being introduced to the world of fashion and of its cultural and sustainability dimensions, students got training on business models development (or lean canvas) and necessary information about basic financial aspects of running a fashion business, including pricing policy. The business model approach allows students, future entrepreneurs, to develop their business ideas through an engineering process, described first by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2011), and by Ries (2014) afterwards. The final outcome of their group work were the business models elaborated for their own venture ideas within the fashion industry.
It is worth saying that all these interesting outcomes and experiences were acquired despite the COVID-19 pandemic situation that froze the world at the beginning of March and resulted in the closure of the universities and in the transfer of education to the virtual space. Some elements of our plans, including mutual visiting professorships and company visits could not be accomplished, some were done remotely. However, the final outcome remains very positive and inspires for the future.
The innovation of the approach resides also in the simultaneous deployment of the approaches in three involved countries, having different cultural and social heritage, however nowadays following common patterns toward internationalisation of the education and of the research. Therefore, our partner institutions are looking for ensuring the durability of the project outcomes by implementing the elaborated methods in permanent curricula and by continuing their fruitful cooperation.