Indigenous Place in Virtual Space: Disrupting Western Approaches to Research and Pedagogy in an Online Course and Curriculum

Abstract

The Caroline College and Pastoral Institute (CCPI) opened in 2010 in Weno, Chuuk. Students took classes online in community-built classrooms and faculty taught courses from outside of Chuuk. A 2016 study on the pass rates for EN102, Expository Writing, of students from CCPI compared to students taking the class on the Chaminade (CUH) campus in Honolulu indicated that students at CCPI were almost five times as likely to fail the same course taught over the same time period. As a result, English faculty from CCPI and CUH recommended that a bridge class, HU128, Approaches to Information Literacy, should be created for students in Chuuk. The class was developed and implemented, but did not provide the students with culturally appropriate methods of conducting research. The purpose of this study was to develop an ecologically based, culturally relevant, placed-based framework for students taking an online research course in Weno, Chuuk. As a means of assessing the framework and the larger Associates Degree curriculum, three groups of participants provided perspectives on Eurocentric/western research practices, articulated challenges due to cultural and geographic differences, and assessed the efficacy of the framework. Chuukese Educators were interviewed as a means of understanding Chuukese perspectives of western research. CCPI faculty, all non-Chuukese, and teaching online were surveyed on the challenges faced and solutions implemented for their courses. Finally, the students were surveyed on their perceptions of the framework. Findings from all three groups of participants argue for 1) integrating the community into research and other educational practices and curricula, 2) recognizing the hierarchy of the English language throughout the curriculum and the difficulty of translations between Chuukese and English, and 3) creating space for discussion and other collaborative practices.