Using videoed stories to convey Indigenous ‘Voices’ in Indigenous Studies

Abstract

Australian higher education policy espouses the need to expose students to Indigenous knowledges, cultures and pedagogies by embedding appropriate content into the curriculum. One way to overcome the challenges of guest speakers, lack of capacity and a crowded curriculum is to use digital materials regularly during lectures and tutorials. Videos have been shown to create empathy and emotional connection between students and the storyteller. The Voices project consisted of 12 semi-structured conversations with local Indigenous people covering a range of topics, each of which was edited for particular topics and courses to avoid student resistance to difficult material and avoid homogenous representations of Indigenous peoples. The edited video clips were shown in class and evaluated. This research reports on formal anonymous student feedback on teaching, questionnaire responses from 115 students and 10 in-depth interviews. Findings include the authenticity, emotional connection and empathy the storytellers provide, and the need for cultural courage to reflect on one's own positionality and privilege. We argue that digital storytelling is an effective pedagogy that also engages the community and helps further the higher education agenda for culturally inclusive knowledges and perspectives.

Virtual tours of Country: creating and embedding resource-appropriate Aboriginal pedagogy at Australian universities

“…Students appreciated the ability to experience, albeit from a screen, tours of Country; enhanced by the high-definition quality of the video recordings. Similar to findings from Grogan et al (2019), the invitation provided to students by Indigenous Elders and senior knowledge holders to virtually share their knowledges were welcomed as an engaging method of learning. This not only because of its visual appeal, but also insofar as knowledge was contextualised on and to country.…”

“…Research has documented the efficacy of the use of video as evoking understanding and empathy within students, as well as to incite critical engagement (Gay, 2018;Grogan et al, 2019). Importantly for the purpose of Indigenisation, the more tangible and interactive nature of these more visual modes of education have been shown to be conducive to a challenging reconstruction of epistemological and ontological paradigms of students; one of the core goals of curricula Indigenisation (Acton et al, 2017;Jackson et al, 2013;Nash et al, 2006;Nursey-Bray, 2019).…”

Emotions and digital storytelling in the educational context: A systematic review

“…Kocaman-Karoglu, 2016; Schweitzer et al, 2021). As a pedagogical medium, DST makes emotional connections between students during digital story creation for the learning process (Castañeda, 2013;Kocaman-Karoglu, 2016), while DSs as an effective pedagogy assist in the emotional connection between storytellers and students as audiences (Grogan et al, 2021).…”

“…O4: DST and DSs for emotional learning DST is a tool that exploits emotions to improve the learning process (Le, 2020;Mangione et al, 2014;Ryan & Aasetre, 2021). DSs assist emotional learning (Grogan et al, 2021). DST and DSs allow students to gain emotional understanding in the deep learning process (Ryan & Aasetre, 2021).…”

“…Empathy is also evoked when the audience has similar experiences with the storyteller and can imagine themselves in the position of the storyteller (Sljivic et al, 2022). In addition, on the other hand, the empathic process assists in a deeper learning process (Grogan et al, 2021).…”