Lecturers and students’ views of integrating technology in the fashion curriculum.

Abstract

As new educational technologies become available, resources in higher education are lacking but the demand for access to better quality higher education is dramatically increasing. As such, the quest for academics to employ a variety of educational technologies that enable, extend and enhance teaching and learning is urgent and necessary. The aim of this study was to examine the views of lecturers and students on integrating technology in the fashion design programme for the purpose of teaching and learning at the Butterworth campus of the Walter Sisulu University (WSU). This study employed the post-positivist paradigm to gather quantitative data to analyse the views of both lecturers and students about the integration of technology in the fashion programme. Based on the literature review, the Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework and Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) were selected as theoretical frameworks in this study. The data was gathered through a questionnaire, which was adapted and modified from a study by Hossein and Kamal. All seven lecturers and a sample of seventy-nine fashion students participated in this study. The predetermined categories identified included technology knowledge, technology content knowledge, technology pedagogical knowledge, and technological pedagogical and content knowledge. These categories were measured with the view to generalize data to a wider population and to establish if there are any relationships between them. The main findings of the study were that, even though lecturers seem to have a high pedagogical content knowledge, the inclusion of appropriate technologies in the fashion programme requires a combination of robust content knowledge, a diverse array of teaching techniques and competency with emerging teaching technologies.