Showcasing the Design and Evaluation of the Indigenisation of the Information Technology Curriculum

This abstract describes research-informed Indigenous teaching and learning practices trialled over three years to Indigenise the Information Technology (IT) curriculum at the University of Canberra (UC). ‘Indigenizing the Curriculum’ is an institution-wide initiative of UC to draw upon informed, authentic insights into the worldviews, lived experiences, and diverse cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and to embed their ways of knowing, being, doing and learning into the curriculum with beneficial, reconciliatory outcomes both for Indigenous and for non-Indigenous communities. A Design Science Research (DSR) methodology is adopted. DSR requires the iteration through the design and evaluation of artefacts used to solve problems. The Indigenised curriculum is the artefact. Indigenising the IT curriculum encouraged the teaching team to embrace reflective practices to inform successive changes to the design and implementation of the unit to improve its Indigenisation and embed Indigenous perspectives and knowledges in the curriculum using Yunkaporta’s 8 ways of Aboriginal learning pedagogy (Yunkaporta, 2009). Both the design (Romano et al. 2021) and evaluation (Romano et al. 2023) in this research are reported in the literature. The showcase of this research demonstrates reflective practice enabled by the DSR methodology, which has resulted in changes to the Indigenised curriculum over successive iterations to embed Indigenous perspectives and knowledges. The presentation will also describe the importance of team building for the work’s success and demonstrate how, over time, the non-Indigenous members developed cultural knowledge by walking with Indigenous members.