Activity Eleven

How can you include examples of New Zealand's indigenous culture in the design of your eLearning courses?

For starters we can use all aspects of New Zealand’s indigenous culture as examples in learning.  In courses where students are creating documents/publications we are able to incorporate cultural aspects into the scenarios that they are using.  IT has a lot of project driven learning and we are able to increasingly utilise indigenous cultural projects.

With technology now providing new ways of using augmented reality (the ability to take our existing environments and overlay other environments) we can now move towards creating various cultural experiences within any environment.  Last year I worked with a Project Group that was using cell phones to give traditional Pasifika experiences within the Otago Campus environment.  This use of technology to give other cultural experiences to what you are use to is very exciting.

In the Professional Practice thread we look at various cultural practices and awareness.

What approaches can you utilise to meet the needs of indigenous learners?

In order to meet the needs of my indigenous learners, I first need to understand their cultural approach to learning.  The learning environment needs to meet the following needs:

·                Spiritual – The learner will have the conversation with themselves of “can I do this course?”, they need to convince themselves that they can.

·                Physical – Do I have the resources.  They need to be aware of the resources that are needed and know that all the resources are available.

·                Social – Do I have the support.  This includes within the educational institution, and within family, community, Church based groups.

·                Cognition – Can I cope with the demands/work in this course.  Am I “brainy” enough?

As the educator I should see my role as more of a host.  Through my support and the support of central services the learner needs to feel positive about all these needs.  They need to regularly get confirmation that they can do the course.  The required resources should be both recorded and communicated clearly to the learner.

The learner should be encouraged to keep making use of their support networks throughout the course and if needed the Polytech should provide support.

The learner needs regular confirmation of their abilities to complete the course work.

Outline any experiences you have had working with indigenous learners.

What were some of the challenges that you and the learners faced and how did this affect their learning?

Last year as I was working with a Third Year Project group that was primary made up of indigenous learners I struggled within my role as a Capstone Facilitator.  I needed to find out how the development was going but there was very little feedback from the group.  The standard reply was “fine”.

When I was trying to discuss the next step forward they were not forthcoming with what they knew.  As they were the experts about their project my advice was limited by what they could tell me.  They agreed with everything I said even though they were the experts.  I found out later that they knew that my advice was wrong but never said anything.  I was originally annoyed but then realised that they were respecting my authority, even though I was asking them to explain it fully and to help me with the understanding.

I needed to find a different way of them demonstrating what they knew rather then a direct approach of me asking, which was more confrontational.  This created a slight “speed wobble” in their process but didn’t cause too may problems.  I have now learnt to use more subtle methods of discovering what the learner knows.