Evaluation and advancement of the students’ artificial intelligence literacy through toolkit-based teaching instruction in fashion merchandising education

With the rapid adoption of AI in fashion merchandising, there is an increasing need for students to develop AI literacy to meet evolving industry demands. However, higher education faces challenges due to limited discipline-specific pedagogical practices, insufficient student training, and a lack of AI-integrated curricula. Grounded in Bloom's Taxonomy Revisited and IDEO's 3I design thinking framework, this study introduces the #AIforfashionedu toolkit–a how-to-guide toolkit comprising AI-integrated learning activities. These activities were qualitatively implemented in three fashion merchandising-related courses at U.S. institutions. A total of 195 student reflection papers were collected, analysed, and evaluated using a thematic analysis approach. The findings indicate that integrating AI into fashion merchandising activities can enhance students' higher-order cognitive skills related to AI literacy while underscoring the importance of a “human-in-the-loop” approach for responsible AI use. This study contributes to AI-integrated pedagogical research in fashion merchandising and offers actionable guidance for future educational implementation.