Unsure where to begin?
Jump onto the Embracing Indigenous Learning and Teaching Canvas Module. Self-enroll at this link: https://swinburne.instructure.com/enroll/CMBAT4 (*NOTE: Completion of this Canvas module is expected of all teaching staff).
Scroll down to Module 4: Teaching Toolbox. Module 4 has everything you need to know for this review process
There are four steps to this review:
1. Writing your unit Acknowledgment Page
2. Reviewing, amending, decolonisisng and Indigenising your unit curricular
3. Writing a Course/ Unit Statement for your unit Acknowledgment Page
4. Reviewing your Course/Unit Learning outcomes
Step 1: Writing your unit Acknowledgment Page.
Jump to: https://swinburne.instructure.com/courses/22942/modules/items/2298390 in the Embracing Indigenous Learning and Teaching Canvas Module.
The elements of the Indigenous Acknowledgment page are:
a Welcome to Country,
a Unit Convenor Acknowledgment of Country,
a link to Moondani Toombadool Centre's Indigenous Student Services,
a link to the Indigenous Cultural Competency module,
a link to library databases, and
the Cultural Warning notice.
A template (which includes all these elements), can be imported to your unit's Canvas page, through Swinburne Commons.
To import the template, access Canvas Commons on your Navigation menu to the left and search for the 'Indigenous page for Canvas units [template]'. Then import the page into your unit or organization and amend the information accordingly. Ant Edwards has also created a handy guide on how to import the Indigenous Acknowledgement into a Canvas site, video available here: https://commons.swinburne.edu.au/items/304bc6a6-a9aa-4822-84d1-71887168c103/1/
– Lets break down each of
these elements, step by step –
Welcome to Country
The Welcome to Country video by Dr Andrew Peters is included in the template. In this video, Andrew tells of his own educational journey here at Swinburne and Welcomes all students and staff to the lands of the Wurundjeri People.
Course Team/Unit Convenor Acknowledgement of Country
An Acknowledgement of Country is a respectful and inclusive way to begin important and everyday events like the start of semester. The template includes the University's Acknowledgment of Country:
We respectfully acknowledge the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, who are the Traditional Owners of the land on which Swinburne’s Australian campuses are located in Melbourne’s east and outer-east, and pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. We are honoured to recognise our connection to Wurundjeri Country, history, culture and spirituality through these locations, and strive to ensure that we operate in a manner that respects and honours the Elders and Ancestors of these lands. We also respectfully acknowledge Swinburne’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, partners and visitors. We also acknowledge and respect the Traditional Owners of lands across Australia, their Elders, Ancestors, cultures and heritage, and recognise the continuing sovereignties of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nations.
You can, if you wish, also provide a personal Acknowledgement of Country.
Moondani Toombadool Centre (MTC)
The template includes a Moondani Toombadool Centre Student Services statement. Centering Indigenous services as part of the general on-boarding student experience (especially in the First Year / First Semester): "ensures students' education and training experience is positive, culturally inclusive and successful".
The Indigenous Student Services team provides services to Indigenous students, including on-campus, online and community learners. Students receive assistance with pre-enrollment, subject selection, orientation and graduation as well as plans for life after studying. This assistance includes one-to-one tutoring through the Indigenous Academic Success Program, which ensures culturally appropriate tutoring which does not exist within a deficit model.
Direct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in your unit to the MTC, by having a section (included in the template), stating:
"Moondani Toombadool Centre Student Services ensure students’ education and training experience is positive, culturally inclusive and successful. The Indigenous Student Services team provides services to Indigenous students, including on-campus, online and community learners, to be in control of their own studies. Students receive assistance with pre-enrolment, subject selection, orientation and graduation as well as plans for life after studying. This assistance includes one-to-one tutoring through the Indigenous Academic Success program".
The Swinburne Student Cultural Competency Module Statement
The Indigenous Cultural Competency Modules: Undergraduate, Postgraduate and VE.
The Swinburne Student Cultural Competency module is a 1-hr four-part cultural competency module. You should also encourage all students in your units to complete this module. The module covers: Part 1: Cultural Competence; Part 2: The World's Oldest Living Continuing Culture; Part 3: Connecting to Country; and, Part 4: Recognition and Responsibility. This module provides students with an overview of:
– the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia, using maps and other resources to locate local cultural and language groups and Creator Spirits.
– the history of the Wurundjeri, and the struggles and successes in staying connected with country
– the issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education studies
– ways to be and become allies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
The Indigenous Cultural Competency Modules
Swinburne provides the following modules in Canvas for its students:
– Indigenous Cultural Competency UG module in Canvas for the undergraduate Higher Education students,
– Indigenous Cultural Competency PG module for the postgraduate students, and the
–Indigenous Cultural Competency-VET module for the VET students.
**Please note: these links will not work for staff.
It is especially recommended for students in their first year of studies to explore these modules.
Direct students to the: Student Indigenous Cultural Competency Module, available on their Canvas homepage, with the below statement (included in the Template):
Swinburne provides for all students, the Student Indigenous Cultural Competency module in Canvas, which is especially recommended in the first year of studies at Swinburne.
Swinburne Library
Direct students to Indigenous scholarship available in the Swinburne Library:
"The Swinburne library has curated Useful Resources for Indigenous Studies that bring together interdisciplinary databases, journals, videos and ebooks. This is a valuable resource and is recommended for your use throughout your studies"
The library staff can also assist teaching teams in:
– 'Wading through' the resources available to find Indigenous 'content' relating to disciplinary and professional discussions.
– Locating and embedding academic and grey (Blak) "literature" and "content".
– Centering Indigenous Scholarship and the Indigenous ways of storying this contribution
CULTURAL WARNING:
The Cultural Warning statement is a way to respectfully warn Indigenous students that learning, teaching and assessment materials may cause sorrow. The Warning serves as a reminder for both staff and students that dialogue about "data", "theory" and "practice" stories also the violent erasure of Indigenous minds, bodies and territories.
Provide a cultural warning (included in the template) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in your units:
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander users are warned that this material may contain images and voices of deceased persons, and images of places that could cause sorrow. Some images, text, terms and annotations used in content and assessment will reflect the period in which the item was produced and may be considered inappropriate today in some circumstances."
Step 2: Reviewing, amending, decolonisisng and Indigenising your unit curricular
If you have a good idea of how to begin reviewing reviewing, amending, decolonisisng and Indigenising your unit curricular, then you can start right away!
However, many of you will find you need a bit of guidance from MTC.
To begin, please send an email to the Academic Director of Indigenous Teaching and Learning to set up a meeting. This is Emma Gavin (egavin@swin.edu.au), until the end of November 2022) and then, Mat Jakobi (mjakobi@swin.edu.au), from December 5th, 2022 onward. Ahead of your meeting, please invite the Academic Director of Indigenous Teaching and Learning to your Canvas units.
You can also speak to your Schools Chairs and ADEs, as they may have helpful resources already. Such as the RAP Canvas Org in SoDA, the Indigenising and decolonising Community of Practice in SoSCET, and the Indigenising health committee in SoH.
Step 3: Writing a Course/ Unit Statement for your unit Acknowledgment Page
In addition to the University Acknowledgment page outlined in Step: 1, you are also encouraged to include a Unit and Course specific statement. The statements will show your students how and where, you are specifically engaging with Indigenous content in your units.
Things to consider:
1) Indigenous and Reconciliation position statements: Useful for framing unit template Acknowledgment “Why are students learning Indigenous perspectives as part of everyday disciplinary practice”. Useful for framing professional advocacy and workplace professional and cultural capabilities
2) Organisation of Indigenous curriculum & learning standards: Useful for comparing current course and unit outcomes and content organisation. Useful when framing new learning outcome and content organisation (more on this in Step 3. Useful for mapping what cultural competency ‘looks’ like when applied to disciplines and professional practice
3) Indigenous engagement, pathways and transitions: Useful for engaging Indigenous students, making pathways and transitions into grad/post grad. Indigenous Professional Associations and local/peak body representation. Useful for identifying Indigenous professional and academic standpoints. Useful for engaging Indigenous students, making pathways and transitions
4) Professional standards to be culturally and professionally capable: Useful for defining what Indigenous graduate ready means in the course/ to Course Teams. Working toward graduate capabilities, cultural competency and workplace codes of conduct
Examples of Swinburne Course / Unit statements
Bachelor of Nursing - Course Statement
Throughout the Bachelor of Nursing, you have participated in learning about culturally safe healthcare practice. Cultural safety in healthcare is the ability of healthcare professionals to understand how their worldview impacts their practice. “Cultural safety is the recipient’s own experience and cannot be defined by the caregiver” (CATSINaM 2014). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have experienced poor health outcomes as a result of healthcare organisations and professions' practices in mainstream healthcare. Students will develop a deep understanding of how health inequities that arise from political, societal, historical and economic injustices such as colonisation and racism impact health outcomes. Providing culturally safe healthcare can result in respectful and equitable mainstream healthcare. This learning process requires commitment to a lifelong journey of critical self-reflection that enables understanding of one’s own and the collective worldview and how this impacts people who are engaging with healthcare services. Culturally safe practice will also promote health equity for the diverse groups of peoples engaging with mainstream healthcare in Australia. This practice is central to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, Registered Nurse Standards for Practice and the Victorian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural safety framework.
NUR30001: End of Life Care - Unit Statement
This unit prepares nursing students to work with people who have life-limiting conditions and their families. You will further explore cultural safety in relation to palliative and end of life care. The Australian mainstream palliative care model that is dominated by Western traditions and the biomedical model need to integrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples traditions, values and cultural practices to ensure equitable healthcare. You will consider the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, that is there are many different traditions, values and cultural practices for different groups of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, therefore acknowledge the specific needs for the individual, their family and community. You will work through a case study to consider how you can practice in a culturally safe way. You will also explore your worldview and reflect on how this impacts your nursing practice through online, tutorial and simulation activities. To complete this unit, you will independently review a case study (assessment one) and explain how you can work towards providing culturally safe, equitable healthcare.
Health Promotion – Unit Statement
HEA20006 adopts a strengths-based approach to Indigenous health, placing significance on the central role of Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations in improving the physical, psychological and cultural wellbeing of Australia’s First Peoples. Indigenous ways of knowing are integrated throughout the unit, and Indigenous voices are prioritised through both the teaching and the assigned readings/recordings. Online interviews between Indigenous health researchers and documentaries adopting Indigenous perspectives are included as learning resources. Articles authored by Indigenous researchers are included in the reading list and priority has been given to readings focused on specific Indigenous groups. Cultural humility and cultural safety education are core topics within HEA20006, aimed at producing culturally safe health promotion officers and relevant practitioners.
Criminology – Unit Statement
This unit examines a specific aspect of the criminal justice system: young people in youth justice. While this unit offers students an opportunity for close analytical engagement with the laws, theories, practices, it works to foreground Indigenous knowledges pertaining to young people who offend. The unit will challenge students to consider how laws are shaped in way that we witness the overrepresentation of Aboriginal young people in Youth Justice. As students become familiar with various statutory regimes that mediate youth contact across the states of Australia and also with the theoretical explanations and methodologies to understand and engage in response to this category of crime, they will be asked to critically consider the Western and colonial foundations of the criminal justice and how institutions can be more culturally aware and responsive.
Dietetics – Unit Statement
This unit is a foundational unit in dietetics which prepares dietetics students to see the world beyond their own perspective, experiences and attitudes. During this unit you will be learning about systems and structures of power and privilege and how they relate to healthcare and education. During this unit you will also learn directly from peoples of diverse backgrounds, sharing their lived experience along with their educational wisdom, to shape the way you see the world and see your role as a dietitian working for health equity. It is within this context that this unit explores nutrition practices and approaches in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Aligned with the National Competency Standards for Dietitians, this development in your understanding of the social, historical and political landscape of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples lives and health is essential. Your learning will be facilitated through a selection of learning and reflecting activities: Self-guided online learning materials. Incorporated examples relevant to public health nutrition practice in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities. Workshops and seminars with Indigenous specialists in healthcare and justice systems. Assessment; critical appraisal of nutrition promotion projects in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities. Opportunities throughout the unit to select Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities as a priority community to focus while developing public health nutrition skills
Step 4: Review of your Course/Unit Learning outcomes
It is important that your units engage with Indigenous content and scholarship in authentic ways. This means Indigenous content and scholarship that is embedded into the weekly topics, not just an "Indigenous week". When engagement with Indigenous content is done authentically, it is then possible to have an appropriate course and units learning outcome related to the Indigenous content, learning, or scholarship.
All CLO and ULO changes will need to be approved by SAC. As a result, it is likely that course teams will wait, and submit all changes together. There are also a few course reviews occurring, and engagement with LEAP and WIL changes, which may mean your CD, UC or Department will wait, and submit all changes in a single go – that is fine. However, in the meantime, these CLOs and ULOs should be drafted, so they are ready to go!
These can be developed within your teaching teams, or you can reach out to me for assistance with developing these in consultation with you. Please arrange a meeting or workshop via email.
Why is this review important?
Ensuring our units are inclusive of Indigenous content, standpoints and scholarship, works towards Swinburne's RAP and strategic plan targets.
Like the introduction of WIL in our units, the inclusion of the Indigenous Acknowledgement page and Indigenous course and unit learning outcomes are a requirement. While the Acknowledgement page template items will be the same in across units, each unit will engage in Indigenous content, scholarship and learning outcomes in different ways. We are not expecting all units to engage with Indigenous content in the same depth or manner.
For guidance on how this could work in your unit, please set up a meeting or workshop with the Academic Director of Indigenous Teaching and Learning at MTC.
To view Swinburne’s Indigenous HE Course Review Framework and the Indigenising and Decolonising Teaching and Learning Continuum, please jump to Module 4.5: DRAFT Course and Unit Review Framework in the Embracing Indigenous Learning and Teaching Canvas Module.
If anything about this review process is unclear, or if you would like to set up a meeting or workshop with me, please get in touch: Emma Gavin (egavin@swin.edu.au), until the end of November 2022) and then, Mat Jakobi (mjakobi@swin.edu.au), from December 5th, 2022 onward.
