Overview
Beginning in the fall of 2018, Trent University embarked on a bold initiative: every student at Trent University must take an Indigenous Course Requirement Course (ICR). Today, the ICR course list comprises 24 courses, mostly at the first- and second-year levels. The purpose of the ICR is to ensure that all undergraduate students have a foundational understanding of Indigenous cultures, traditions, histories, perspectives, and aspirations so that they can, if they choose, engage in more effective reconciliation action within their own communities; in the process, they may also contribute to the improvement of the life conditions of Indigenous peoples, as well as the creation of a Canada that recognizes and engages with the original inhabitants of this land with dignity and respect.
In response, as professors in the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies, we worked to revise one of our first-year courses: Introduction to Indigenous Studies. We redesigned and delivered it as INDG 1001H: Foundations for Reconciliation, and about two-thirds of all students took this course to fulfill the ICR requirement. It also meant an enrolment of about 150 students in an online version of the course in the summer. Our challenge was to deliver an engaging, relevant, and timely course to students who would not have taken the course without the ICR. The course was facilitated by a team of instructors, graduate teaching assistants, and workshop leaders. The course was delivered through the traditional lecture and seminar approach: each student was assigned to one of five sections and one of 32 seminars.
We received a Wickerson Foundation Fund grant for the revision project. The revisions were to be informed by the principles of Universal Design for Learning: multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression. We also wanted to have our course design informed by Indigenous Knowledge (IK): it must tell a story that students could easily learn, engage them holistically, and transform their understanding of themselves and Indigenous peoples while creating optimism for a shared future. We started the first year with minimal changes to the existing course and monitored and evaluated student reactions to the course material, assignments, lectures, and seminars. During this process, we engaged in an extensive discussion about course objectives, learning outcomes, course material and assignments, and lecture and seminar content. The use of UDL proved challenging as our understanding of this framework was limited. This paper tells our story of learning to use UDL and what we discovered about how to use it effectively.
The Foundations for Reconciliation course has an enrolment where as many as 75% of our students report they would not be taking this course if it wasn’t a degree requirement of the university. Teaching in this environment poses significant challenges to student engagement and learning. In that space, the Wickerson Foundation Fund project was guided by a commitment to collaboration. This collaboration began with two faculty members who were the grant recipients. The core group expanded to become a group of 14, comprising faculty members who taught the course on the Durham campus and, in the summer, Workshop Leaders and Graduate Teaching Assistants. We held separate weekly meetings during the academic year with the course-associated faculty and seminar leaders. We believed that our revisions should be informed by classroom experience as well as the knowledge and experience of the course leaders. At the outset, there were Professor David Newhouse and Professor Robin Quantick. David and Robin have very different lived experiences.
David Newhouse
David Newhouse is Onondaga from the Six Nations of the Grand River community near Brantford, Ontario. He is a Full Professor of Indigenous Studies and, between 1993 and 2023, chaired the Department of Indigenous Studies and later served as Director of the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies. He is also a Professor at the School of Business. David has spent most of his professional life working in the academy. In this process, he incorporated Indigenous Knowledge into every aspect of his work. David’s impact has been noteworthy; in a 31-year trajectory, he has worked to Indigenize and decolonize our university, community, and faculty associations across Canada.
Robin Quantick
Robin Quantick is a first-generation Canadian, the son of British immigrants of Welsh origin. He is an Assistant Professor cross-appointed to the School for Indigenous Studies and the School of Business. Before returning to graduate school in 2007, he spent 27 years running a company that provided teachers, guidance counsellors, psychometrists, and educational records clerks to the Correctional Service of Canada Institutions in Atlantic, Ontario, and Prairie Regions. In this work, he was involved in training, placing, and assessing correctional educators (teachers) working with incarcerated adults at every level of security. Universal Design for Learning was the preferred approach to curriculum design in this teaching environment. Robin was trained as a junior/intermediate teacher and taught grades four, five and six in the provincial school system before teaching incarcerated adults.
David and Robin were joined by three other faculty members who had delivered the Introduction to Indigenous Studies course over the previous decade. We included these additional members to foster consistency of curriculum and delivery across all the sites where the course was offered. It also provided an opportunity to discuss and analyze how to use UDL to improve the course. The seminar and workshop leaders were included as they brought direct classroom and student reactions to the discussion. The only member of the group who had previously used UDL was Robin.
