Design for Indigenisation of the IT Curriculum

Following an institution-wide mandate by the University of Canberra to Indigenize the curriculum in all courses, this descriptive case study reports on a pilot redesign of the subject unit outline of an Information Technology (IT) unit that previously had no Indigenous-related content. The study experimented with different designs to embed Indigenisation holistically in a unit that is mandatory for students undertaking IT Degrees at the University of Canberra, Australia. With support from educational design specialists, the curriculum was redesigned to integrate Yankaporta’s (2009) 8 Ways of Indigenous learning framework into the content, teaching methods, and assessment as expressed in the unit outline to integrate Indigenisation and build a design that can be adapted applied in other IT units over time. The study applied a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology to evaluate the previous unit outline, design its replacement and observe and reflect on the successes and challenges of its implementation over one semester with one cohort of students. This methodology can also be applied in future iterative cycles of continuous adjustment and improvement of the unit’s curriculum by designers such as conveners, lecturers and program directors, to inform the designs for other units that have no Indigenous-related content.