Puna ʻIli: Designing an Accessible and Culturally Sustaining Digital Learning Environment for Beginning Homesteaders

Abstract

Agricultural landowners venturing toward alternative lifestyles, or homesteading, face a multitude of challenges such as: uncertainty of income, lack of experience, safety and hazard concerns, and risk of losing time and monetary investment (Smith & El‑Swaify, 2006). These challenges are further exacerbated for homesteaders looking to acclimate to agricultural production in the volcanic influenced soil composition of the Puna region of Moku o Keawe (Hawaiʻi Island). This project looked to develop a culturally-based and localized instructional intervention to bridge a gap in knowledge for new and beginner homesteaders acclimating to agricultural crop production in lava impacted environments. To address this gap in instruction, an informal, blog-style mobile learning website was designed to guide beginner homesteaders in foundational ʻike (knowledge).

Through the framework of Place-Based Learning and Indigenous Knowledge Systems, the instruction was developed into three modules to acclimate beginners to Puna’s volcanic environment and cultural epistemologies, build foundational knowledge in soil variation for crop production, and apply culturally appropriate and sustainable crop production practices. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed instructional website, three usability sessions reviewing language and content, visual design, and user ease of navigation were conducted to help improve instruction prior to participant testing. Following multiple iterations of the instruction, a pre-instructional and post-instructional survey were administered to evaluate the overall learning and attitudinal effectiveness of 18 new and beginner homesteading participants on Moku o Keawe.