Project

Fashion Designers and Observation Skills: How Learning Technology Supports Apprentices in Decoding Non-Textual Information

The study aims at investigating how web-based learning scenarios could be co-designed with fashion design school teachers to develop and improve apprentices’ observation skills.

Rido / Fotolia

Observation skills have been widely used and investigated in specific fields such as medical education. However, the current knowledge is limited to highly specialized professions, while the importance of good observation skills in initial VET systems has hardly been explored, and the issue has not yet been fully recognized. Within the specific context of fashion designers, the ambition behind this research proposal is that learning scenarios based on “Realto”, the electronic environment developed within the Dual-T project , can have a potential to support the apprentice’s observation of garments and technical drawings. To this extent, the current contribution intends to investigate:

  • what the characteristics of observation are for fashion designers in training and how their ways of observing differ from those of their teachers;
  • to explore to what extent technology, embodied in specific learning scenarios, can be perceived as an added value in supporting fashion design learners to decode images.

 

Supervisor of the dissertation:

  • Prof. Dr. Jean-Luc Gurtner (University of Fribourg)
Method

Study 1 investigated the characteristics of observation in the profession of fashion design according to learners and teachers. This preliminary study was relevant to identify the ways that distinguish learners and teachers when observing clothes and decoding pictures. Observational skills were explored in the context of two vocational schools. A test based on images of clothes has been submitted to both apprentices and teachers, who quantified the number of defects and possible corrections per each given picture; classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers and learners have been conducted too.

Study 2 served to follow-up on the use by fashion designers of a specific tool to support observational practices that emerged from Study 1. In particular, Study 2 aimed at exploring the current use of the learning and performance documentation (LPD) in the Swiss VET system, investigating its different functions according to different professions. Furthermore, it intended to clarify whether a Web-based LPD could offer added value to the people active in the different VET learning locations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders from each main VET domain (Industrial & Handicraft, Commerce, Health & Social Care). The study gave a detailed overview of the different functions of the LPD both within and across professions. Furthermore, it provided suggestions for the Dual-T team in developing the online platform Realto. The platform was therefore designed according to the needs of different professions

In Study 3, the online platform Realto was implemented in the two fashion design VET schools of Cantone Ticino. In particular, the study addressed the design and development of two scenarios – based respectively on image overlapping and image annotation – for teaching observation skills; it investigated whether and how technology adds value to implementing the same scenarios using only paper and pencil. Each scenario was therefore implemented in a paper-based version first and then in a technology-enhanced one. The potential of technology was analysed by means of semi-structured interviews with teachers, focus groups with learners, and video-recordings of the learning activities.

 

Results

Findings show that fashion designers’ observation consists of different goal-oriented ways to look at the clothes, which concern: 1. the identification of patterns and relevant details; 2. the identification of defects; 3. a customer body’s analysis.

Findings also show visual expertise differs between teachers and apprentices: while teachers (as creators) focus on the identification of patterns and relevant details, more advanced apprentices act as fixers able to suggest some corrections to fix the defects, while beginner apprentices are simple observers able to spot some defects on the superficial level.

Based on these results, the characteristics of the fashion designers’ observation skills seem to be as complex as those of highly specialized professions (e.g. medical staff or architects).

Concerning the added value of technology, Realto resulted to be an online learning environment well-suited to support visual activities based on comparing/contrasting different cases. Specifically, findings show that Realto can enrich the learning experiences by promoting classroom discussions and by triggering the learners’ motivation to detect and exploit meaningful pieces of information from different images. In so doing, Realto creates better visual conditions for overlay and annotation supporting apprentices to learn from their errors, while providing the teachers with tools to make the link between theoretical concepts and pieces of clothing under investigation closer.