Planning and teaching for effective learning

The Costing Lecture

Contextual background

As part of the unit that teaches our Fashion Contour students how to design for a professional brief, I teach a session about calculating the production cost of garments and how to estimate a recommended retail price (RRP) that will allow all parties involved to make a reasonable profit. I do this by talking students through the production and retail cycle, introducing some of the many factors that can influence prices, in order to make them understand how their design choices will affect commercial viability of a product.
This is a lecture that I enjoy delivering because I have a geeky side to me that enjoys puzzles and problem solving.

Evaluation

However, it is fair to say this isn’t my students’ favourite session, as it is not a particularly creative and fun subject. It also involves maths, which is not what fashion students expect or enjoy. With a high percentage of dyslexic students it also proves to be a challenge they don’t relish.

The session is long and full of information, and can be overwhelming. I do reassure them that they do not have to remember everything that is being taught, but the main focus of the session is to understand the process and appreciate how many factors can affect the financial viability of fashion design. This is particularly important as we are a product focused course, mainly concerned with the commercial aspect of creative design.

In order to make the session more appealing and easier to follow, I include a few “fun” intermissions: a video of the cutting process; questions to the students; infographics of the maths involved to make it more accessible. This is also an attempt to maximise on the retention of information achieved through passive and active learning, as suggested by the learning pyramid theory. (CDP, 2022)

I conclude the session with a group exercise, where students have to put the teaching into practice and t0gether we fill in a prearranges spreadsheet, so they learn how to use it for their own project. The spreadsheet itself is set up so they only have to fill in a chart and not do the calculations.

I have, however, noticed that most but a few students loose interest and struggle to engage with the session again when they return from their break, which I give about two thirds of the way through.

Usually, a couple of confident students take over the interaction that I instigate, giving me a false sense of still having an audience, but in reality the last part of the session is not well followed. The students engage again when we start the group activity, and remain engaged for the spread sheet demonstration.

Moving Forward

In order to improve the engagement of students with the whole lecture, I intend to improve how I distribute the activities across the lecture.

I could introduce more videos, including some funny once to watch before or after the lesson. There are plenty of Tiktok/Instagram videos supporting crafters and the cost of their labour.

I could introduce more questions to promote students interaction, and call on specific students to participate if they are not looking attentive, being careful that it is not done in a “gotcha” fashion.

I can review the time scale of the lecture, and make sure there isn’t too long a period without some interactive exchange with the students. The most obvious change would be to anticipate the first part of the group activity to run as students return from break, in order to recapture their attention. After this the last part of the lecture should be better received. In conclusion, the activity can be concluded together, showing them how to compile the questionnaire: something that usually capture their attention as it is directly related to their assignment

Resources

The CPD Certification Service (2022) What is The Learning Pyramid? Available at: https://cpduk.co.uk/news/what-is-the-learning-pyramid (Accessed: 5 January 2025)