“Creative Teaching of Engaged Visual Merchandising Courses with Limited Resources”
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The first national meeting of textile and clothing professors took place in Madison, Wisconsin in June 1959. With a mission to advance excellence in education, scholarship and innovation, and their global applications, the International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA) is a professional and educational association of scholars, educators, and students in the textile, apparel, and merchandising disciplines in higher education.
This site provides free, public access to the ITAA annual conference proceedings beginning in 2015. Previous proceedings can be found by following the "Additional ITAA Proceedings" link on the left sidebar of this page.
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Previously, two visual merchandising courses were taught as lecture-based classes with no real-world applications. The instructors wanted to reinforce student knowledge of lectured concepts by incorporating various modes of creative teaching to provide hands-on application and real-world experiences to help students transfer learning to different contexts (National Research Council, 2000). The challenge was circumventing the lack of current program resources and limited available storage space. A variety of creative teaching methods were employed to provide students with engaging, real-world applications. The results were availability and access to visual merchandising props and practice with little to no cost and minimal to no storage space. Immersing students in real-world applications, reinforced lectured concepts and fostered higher student engagement, critical thinking, and creative skills. Implications exist for other apparel and textile courses, circumventing challenges for generating an engaged learning environment.