Mistakes in Jewelry Education Courses

As mentioned, jewelry education courses are one of the emerging courses introduced in recent years. Identifying courses that are effective, meet jewelry boutique owners’

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expectations, and are acceptable to learners is one of the most crucial goals of such courses.

However, questions such as work skills demanded by the jewelry boutique industry, areas that schools should help students improve to facilitate training, and modifications to course

content in response to industry changes and changing times should be carefully explored to formulate appropriate solutions that meet social expectations and industry needs. Fujian et al.(2006) study on present situation of the jewelry education in universities and points out the problems such as laying too much stress on theory, ability to identify, and amount of students, and looking down on practice, management, and quality. Its education is short of explicit aim, cultural quality and wide-ranging knowledge.

Literature on course-related mistakes mostly focuses on the gap between language education and students’ language level. Guo (2011) investigated mistakes in junior high school geography courses taught in the new curriculum and asserted that such mistakes were a result of the gap between student needs and two other factors (i.e., education techniques and course innovation). The study examined three mistakes, which are listed as follows: (a) many schools are fixated on designing novel and innovative courses but fail to consider the

legitimacy of traditional courses, which have withstood the test of time and are a result of many years of development. Therefore, innovative courses do not necessarily equate to being the “right” courses; (b) schools wrongfully believe that geography education requires constant innovation, resulting in excessive interactive education that creates overly complex and impractical course content; and (c) teachers include a disproportionately high amount of related information in geography courses in an effort to be comprehensive and to demonstrate their authority over the subject, which deviate from the original objectives of the courses. In a study on education mistakes and adaptive strategies, Guan (2012)focused on teacher training, teaching strategies, and teaching speed, in which three mistakes were explored: (a) teacher training for non-Chinese teaching is not necessary; however, this resulted in teachers’

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inability to teach foreign students who do not know any Chinese; (b) teachers alternate the language used in class to teach Chinese, in which teachers use English to explain Chinese and students communicate in their mother tongue, creating a poor language learning environment;

and (c) the manner in which teachers use a language becomes the standards by which students emulate, such as inappropriate talking speed (e.g., too fast or too slow) hinders students’

ability to express themselves clearly to others in the future. Luo and Guo (2013) pointed out three mistakes in their study on mistakes in jewelry design courses taught in higher education in Taiwan, which were (a) poor training targets and overly simple drawings that cannot be used in practice; (b) excessively high number of jewelry design courses offered solely for the purpose of offering them. Students are thus unable to gain further knowledge and experience in jewelry production and market changes; (c) problems in the ratio of jewelry design theories and practical jewelry design knowledge taught. Luoand Guo also indicated that to develop outstanding jewelry designers, engineering courses and art education must be integrated to create scientific, sound theoretical as well as practical education systems. The aforementioned studies each put forth their views on the effects that the incompatibility between education content and teachers’ education methods have on students’ learning results.

Jewelry education course-related planning in Taiwanese schools are often restricted by teachers’ limited expertise or their need to comply with schools’ education plans and demonstration of students’ learning results (e.g., learning results presentation). As a result, they place a disproportionately high emphasis on metal craft training and art creation,

overlooking the fact that the ultimate goal is to market the merchandise created. In marketing management, service quality and interpersonal relationship training are considered an

essential part of training. Differences in teachers’ backgrounds and expertise may result in the skills learned by students failing to completely meet the needs and expectations of the

industry. In addition, jewelry boutique owners can only select from available courses when

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training employees and the right courses and education departments that truly meet their needs have been difficult to find; as a result, employees who study such courses are unable to effectively elevate their service quality and the stores’ business performance.

This study introduced the concept of seamless integration, in which jewelry boutique owners ‘needs and courses provided by schools ‘educational departments were investigated to identify course mistakes. Next, the CCR model used in data envelopment analysis were employed to locate the most crucial weight for the two parties, in which the weights were used as the basis for course planning. This enabled educational departments to offer courses deemed by teachers and jewelry boutique owners as highly important and most effective, providing students and employees with the training urgently needed by the jewelry industry.

This also allowed the courses to meet actual market demands so that students and employees do not find the skills learned inapplicable or unable to meet the demands and expectations of customers and the jewelry industry.

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CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODS

3.1 Discussion with Business Experts

Discussions were conducted with industry experts (i.e., jewelry boutique owners and executive officers) based on questions that were arranged by the researchers of this study.

According to the responses from the various respondents, additional questions were

developed to explore the professional needs of jewelry owners in training sales staff and other employees.