Multimedia Exhibition Teaches Undergraduate Students About Sustainable Fashion

Abstract

Fashion industry leaders and academic scholars have indicated that there is a great need in higher education to teach fashion students about sustainable fashion because fashion students simultaneously represent a group of fashion consumers and future industry professionals. The limited research published on this topic has concluded that there are significant gaps in fashion students’ knowledge of sustainable fashion, which creates a fundamental need for finding ways to effectively educate fashion students about sustainability. Students currently enrolled in higher education represent the “Millennial Generation.” Previous research has indicated that Millennials learn best when they are able to connect abstract concepts with concrete examples, using experiential learning techniques. In light of this, the purpose of this study was to test the validity of such research findings by examining the effect that experiential learning, utilizing multimedia learning tools, has on fashion students’ knowledge of sustainability in fashion manufacturing. The experiential learning activity was an educational exhibit titled Fashion & Sustainability. The exhibit provided students with an opportunity to experience social, environmental, and economic sustainability related to the fashion industry in a learning space specifically designed to exemplify the various facets of sustainable fashion through the utilization of multimedia learning tools, including visuals, video, and hands-on activities. To better understand the effect that the experiential techniques had on students’ learning, the study measured the learning outcomes between two groups of undergraduate students enrolled in fashion courses in the Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Interiors at The University of Georgia. Survey questionnaires were used to measure students’ learning and were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed using t-tests and theme identification. The first group included students that were enrolled in an introductory fashion course, TXMI 3210, which covered the basic principles of sustainable fashion. The second group of students only attended the exhibition and learned about sustainable fashion through the exhibit alone. Ultimately, there was minimal difference between the acquired knowledge of students that participated in the course and attended the exhibition, compared to the students that only attended the exhibition, which suggests that through experiential learning methods, students are able to learn just as much, if not more, about sustainable fashion.