DISCIPLINE
Resource Management: Aboriginal Studies

DURATION
Entire length of unit

ICT USED
Dynamic Web site: facilitates online discussion and allows students to add to the knowledge base via additions to glossary and bibliography

DELIVERY CONTEXT
The learning design has been used in two contexts to date:

• As an external learning program, this was taught for a second time recently for a summer semester program at the end of 2001.
• As a support tool for face-to-face teaching.

The lecturer is now combining student cohorts in both external and face-to-face to enable the learning community to be independent of location.

TARGET AUDIENCE
Three groups:

GROUP 1 - Undergraduate first-year students studying resource management/ATSI studies:

• Gender mix 60/40 M/F.
• Age 30+.
• Varied literacy levels – some students returning to study after a long period.
• 20% Indigenous, 80% non-Indigenous.

GROUP 2 - Post-graduate students in Resource management:

• 60/40 M/F.
• 35+.
• Varied literacy levels – some students returning to study after a long period.
• 20% Indigenous.
• 80% non-Indigenous.

GROUP 3 - Students from other disciplines, particularly Education and Arts:

• 50/50 M/F.
• 30+.
• Generally standard undergraduate literacy levels.
• Generally non-Indigenous.

Prior computer knowledge:

More students in the first two groups have less experience with using technology. Some students have high levels of competence, but these are in the minority. The third group are typical of generally standard undergraduates in this respect.

COHORT
20 to 25 students to one instructor.

BROADER CONTEXT
This unit is a core first year unit within both the Bachelor or Resource Management and the Bachelor of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

Both programs have been trying to make the study opportunities for students more flexible by developing different delivery models that includes online components.

The participatory nature of the students’ role is part of the approach to pedagogy which is practised across the faculty to enable Indigenous students particularly, access to Western education systems.

This unit was challenging as the low key, non-traditional power dynamics which constitute a classroom setting within this Faculty was difficult to contextualise using this technology environment because of the importance of human interaction in the learning process. The high levels of support and encouragement some students required to contest those perceived to have subject matter authority was difficult to replicate with online technologies.

• Develop an understanding of the contingent nature of all knowledge systems.
• Develop an understanding of the history of the western scientific tradition and the events that have been quintessential in the shaping of the current, dominant knowledge system in (north) Australi.
• Recognise the importance of the negotiation of knowledge systems in approaching resource management issues.
• Recognise the inherent validity in and the importance of local knowledge systems in the face of current globalising and universalising cultural influences.
• Identify and understand both the utility and the problems inherent in the universalising and totalising nature of the western scientific tradition.
• Contribute to the shaping of the text for Contested Knowledges unit.

IMPLEMENTATION OF ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES
Contestation of knowledge is the focus of the unit. This is assessed in the following ways:

1. Initial Response Paper: 750 word discussion on the article by Langton (1996), 'The European Construction of Wilderness'

This first assignment enables students to begin to practice contestation. This assignment is to get students thinking about the different points of view regarding 'Wilderness' and to begin to consider the potential of a range of varying points of view and the way they complement or clash with each other.

2. Issue Contributions to Minor Topic: At least six contributions to the discussions lists about an issue being researched by another student, providing resources, interesting article references or important points to consider when they construct their major assignment on that issue.

This assignment requires students to do some general reading in the area of contestation across a range of areas, eg law, medicine, and share any useful resources with other students giving reasons for including the shared resource.

3. Major Issue: Using a template provided (or create one), students develop their own web page for the Contested Knowledges unit website which addresses the contested nature of one of the issues presented in the classroom.

This assignment is their opportunity to pursue one of the ISSUES discussed within the unit and to report on their investigation into the issue as a web page. The student's report needs to investigate the issue in the light of the four 'Key Questions' .

This assignment enables student to concentrate on one area where they can investigate the contestation issues in some depth. Students are required to use the introductory discussions on each issue as a model for their approach to their own investigations and they are expected to be able to answer the four central questions which are the major focus of this unit in relation to the issue that they have chosen.

4. Glossary and Bibliography Contributions: At least five contributions to each of the 'Contested Knowledges' Glossary and Bibliography.

As part of their contribution to the 'text' of Contested Knowledges students are encouraged to make contributions to both the Glossary and the Bibliography set up for this unit.

The purpose of this assessment was to involve students in a collaborative community where all students were expected to contribute to the development of the collective knowledge about the topics being investigated. It was hoped that in this assessment activity students would be encouraged to participate in the construction of knowledge and actively pursue the negotiation of what is constructed and how it is done.

IMPORTANCE OF ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES USED
The assessment activities are integrally linked to the learning outcomes as they build on one another, enabling students to demonstrate how their understandings of different knowledge systems is developing through a range of progressively more sophisticated tasks. These begin with a response to a paper where a privileged knowledge system is critiqued from the perspective of another system.

Then students’ understandings of how different knowledge systems understand ideas, concepts and disciplines is developed through the glossary and bibliography contributions, the minor task which involves critiquing in the discussion forum some specified discipline areas and finally developing a position on one which is then represented through a website.

WHY ICT IS USED
It enables students who are in remote locations to access the core unit in this degree program.

HOW ICT USE HELPS
The technology has been able to successfully deliver another space in which knowledges can be contested and location of the student is not central.

MOST IMPORTANT ICT CONTRIBUTION TO LEARNING DESIGN
Enabling students to interact through the discussions and develop glossaries and bibliographies collaboratively, which reflect different knowledge systems, is central to this unit.