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Fashion Enterprise: Students' Perceptions of an Entrepreneurship Curriculum in Fashion Management

Explore how a fashion management curriculum project brings finance to life through fashion enterprise, as students gain practical experience in starting and running microbusinesses.

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Fashion Enterprise: Students' Perceptions of an Entrepreneurship Curriculum in Fashion Management

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  1. Bringing Finance To Life Through Enterprise: • Students’ perceptions of an entrepreneurship curriculum project in fashion management • Liz Gee • 28th April 2015 • l.gee@fashion.arts.ac.uk

  2. Session Outline • Origins of the project • How the project works • What the students’ think • Q&A - How could you use a similar project in your curricula?

  3. Origins of The Project: The Problem • BA - BA (Hons) Fashion Management- Importance of financial literacy as a graduate skill- Action learning: skills & knowledge into practice- Increasing student focus on business start-up

  4. The solution:Fashion Enterprise Management (FEM) - Objective to bring cashflow to life through start-up micro business- Year 1 summer term, 10 weeks, 26 teams of 6 students- Each student selects their functional role in the business- Team pitches for £100 seed capital- Safe environment to make mistakeswith incentive as may retain profit after repay original investment (recycled funds) • Elements of:

  5. FEM embedded in the curriculum: • Assessment elements- Funding pitch - Business plan- Reflective statement- Online portfolio • Learning about enterprise, learning for enterprise and experiencing enterprise (QAA 2012) • Scaffolding: A programme of taught lectures & seminars (tutors & experts):- Product- Finance- Marketing • Weekly tutorial with facilitator to support & encourage • Marketplace to share and celebrate success

  6. Outcomes: innovative, trend-led commercial products

  7. Students say about the value of such active learning: ‘really enjoyed working and learning at such a practical level’. ‘tremendously motivating’ ‘‘putting business principles into practice’, ….really tests understanding…. ‘experience everything we studied before…now it has a different meaning for us’. ‘learn by solving problems….and by making mistakes’. ‘has effectively brought to life the real world, out of a textbook’

  8. Students say ‘highly stimulating’ and ‘challenging’ what do they mean? What was for all a ‘significant learning curve’to acquire new skills and put theory into practice. • ‘fantastic experience’, that was ‘fascinating, ‘inspiring’, ‘motivating’, ‘unforgettable’, ‘fun’and ‘very useful’. • ‘not an easy journey’with ‘ups and downs’. Experienced stress from ‘quantity of work required in a short time’and stretch was ‘exhausting at times’. • Self-directed nature & lack of structure exacerbate the pressure (just like in real business) but important ‘we had to manage everything and make all the mistakes on our own’. Authentic experience? • ‘Sense of achievement’ • ‘I tried my best’

  9. Students say about the nature of this group work: • Always a challenge but this time‘shared experience’ led to ‘great camaraderie’ • ‘Real collaboration’, sharing skills and learning from each other, ‘uniting to suceed’collective responsibility ‘for the good of the team’ • Team motivation ‘we had to push ourselves and each other’ and in the process they have developed into ‘independent and secure students’. • Understanding that these challenges reflect the world of work

  10. Students say about the impact on their employability: • Tried out a real job role:‘potentially this could make me more employable, experiencing the real life day to day running of a small business as a marketing director. I have learned many things that I wouldn’t have in a theoretical situation’. • Career possibility raised: ‘Iinitially saw entrepreneurship intimidating….I now feel it is achievable…which has made me more ambitious’. • Career direction confirmed: ‘I have grown immensely. This learning experience has given me more confidence in my own aim to start my own business. The basic principles of finance, business and management learned in this unit will stay with me throughout my working life’. • Generalisability: ‘This project is something to talk about in interview to help us demonstrate determination and motivation’.

  11. Does this project result in higher grades? • Not necessarily; grades are more polarised. Groups not engaged in this will fail. Hard to be a strategic learner (Marton & Saljo 1984) “deep” learning is more likely (Biggs 1999). Extreme immersive experiences can be overwhelming (Boud 2009) • Involvement of whole person in experiential learning (Kolb 1984) including emotions means learning is different for each student (role specific) & hard to replicate. • Reflection is crucial to help make meaning from experience (Schon 1983). • Peer-assisted learning & co-created journey (Jackson & Campbell 2010) with the usual group-work issues • Interesting impact on International students

  12. A difference to their finance learning? • A real appreciation that “Cash is King” & budget constraints; • Profit potential is a great motivator • An authentic real life immersive “situated learning“ experience“unforgettable” “challenging” “relevant” • But so much more too……..transformative • Enterprise is more than the practical business start up skills. Also generic skills of planning, communicating, solving problems & managing projects (Metcalfe 2012) • Also a way of thinking & behaving: turning creative & innovative ideas into action; risk taking, decision making & taking initiative(Rae et al 2012, QAA 2012)

  13. Transferable “Employability” skills Using Rae’s (2008) Enterprise skill-set Personal • Flexible with a “can do” attitude & initiative taking • Perseverance, risk taking, decision making & complex problem solving • Self-confidence, self-motivation and self-discipline • Learning from mistakes People • Interpersonal • Team working Task • Capacity to innovate & generate ideas, skills & capabilities to make them happen • Project Management skills, use of data & finance focus

  14. Q&A – Over to you…….

  15. Useful Tools & Resources • Creative Enterprise Toolkit http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/cet_books_1-4.pdf • http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/ • http://www.own-it.org/ • http://www.shell-livewire.org/ • http://www.startups.co.uk/ • Burke, S. (2012) Fashion Entrepreneur: Starting your own fashion business, 2nd edn. London: Burke publishing. • Granger, M. & Sterling, T. (2012) Fashion Entrepreneurship Retail Business Planning. 2ndedn. New York: Fairchild. • Evans, V. (2011). FT Essential Guide to Writing a Business Plan: How to Win Backing to Start Up or Grow Your Business. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall. • Stutely, Sir R. (2012) The Definitive Business Plan: The Fast Track to Intelligent Planning for Executives and Entrepreuners. 3rd edn. Harlow: FT Prentice (eBook).

  16. References Biggs, J. (2003) Teaching for quality learning at university. 2ndedn. Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education.and Open University Press. Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker, D. (1985) Reflection: Turning experience into learning. Oxford: Routledge Boud, D., Cohen, R., & Sampson, J. (1999) Peer learning in higher education. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 24(4) pp 413:426 Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning. London:PrenticeHall Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Marton, F., & Saljo, R. (1984) ‘Approaches to Learning’, in Marton, F., Hounsell, D. & Entwistle, N. eds (1997) The experience of learning. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press Meyer, J. & Land, R. eds (2006)Overcoming barriers to student understanding: threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. London: Routledge Prosser, M., & Trigwell, K.(1998) Teaching for learning in higher education. Buckingham: Open University Press QAA (2012) Enterprise and entrepreneurship education: Guidance for UK higher education providers. Available at www.qaa.ac.uk [Accessed 2 February 2014] Rae D, (2008) ‘Connecting enterprise and graduate employability: Challenges to the higher education culture and curriculum?’ Education & Training, 49 (8/9) pp.605 – 619 [Accessed 9 October 2013] Rae, D. (2010) ‘Universities and enterprise education: responding to the challenges of the new era’. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development. 17 (4) pp.591 – 606 [Accessed 9 October 2013] Rae, D, Martin, L, Antcliff, V, and Hannon, P (2012) ‘Enterprise and entrepreneurship in English higher education: 2010 and beyond’. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development. 19 (3), pp.380 – 401 [Accessed 9 October 2013] Schon, D. (1983) Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Towards a Design for Teaching andLearning in the Professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

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