Impact of Intensive Study Programs on Higher Education Students in the Field of Design and Modelling of Textile Materials

The knowledge of software for design and modelling of textiles offers a competitive advantage within the world of work for young textile creatives. The Erasmus+ project OptimTex – “Software tools for textile creatives” has created a large set of educational materials and the corresponding e-learning resources in this competitive domain. Six educational modules, one Moodle e-learning platform with courses in six national languages, one e-learning instrument for quick access to the content and one glossary of terms were implemented during the two-year's project 2020-2022 (www.optimtex.eu). Two Intensive Study Programs (ISPs) of five days were already organized by the project's partners: one virtual ISP with the host Technical University of Iasi and one mobility ISP with the host University of Maribor. A total number of 27 students and 15 lecturers participated in the first ISP and a total number of 17 students and 12 lecturers participated in the second ISP. The six modules for Design and Modelling of woven structures, knitted structures, virtual prototyping of clothing, embroidered e-textiles, design of experiments, and TechTransfer had a high impact on the students. The impact was measured by feedback questionnaires and the interest in e-learning resources by the number of accesses (www.advan2tex.eu/portal/). This paper presents the impact of the educational materials on Higher Education students in relation to the envisaged objectives of the project.