Teaching Indigenous Language Revitalization over Zoom

Maya Daurio; Mark Turin

doi:10.18357/kula.214

Authors

Maya Daurio University of British Columbia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5650-6604
Mark Turin University of British Columbia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2262-0986

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.214

Keywords:

Indigenous language revitalization, online learning, digital classroom, technology, COVID-19, pandemic

Abstract

In this teaching reflection, co-authored by an instructor and a teaching assistant, we consider some of the unanticipated openings for deeper engagement that the “pivot” to online teaching provided as we planned and then delivered an introductory course on Indigenous language documentation, conservation, and revitalization from September to December 2020. We engage with the fast-growing literature on the shift to online teaching and contribute to an emerging scholarship on language revitalization mediated by digital technologies that predates the global pandemic and will endure beyond it. Our commentary covers our preparation over the summer months of 2020 and our adaptation to an entirely online learning management system, including integrating what we had learned from educational resources, academic research, and colleagues. We highlight how we cultivated a learning environment centered around flexibility, compassion, and responsiveness, while acknowledging the challenges of this new arrangement for instructors and students alike. Finally, as we reflect on some of the productive aspects of the online teaching environment—including adaptable technologies, flipped classrooms, and the balance between synchronous and asynchronous class meetings—we ask which of these may be constructively incorporated into face-to-face classrooms when in-person teaching resumes once more.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biographies

Maya Daurio, University of British Columbia

Maya Daurio is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include language endangerment and maintenance, traditional ecological knowledge, social-ecological resilience, indigeneity, and mountain geographies. She previously worked in in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and is interested in anthropological, ecological, and humanitarian applications of GIS.

Mark Turin, University of British Columbia

Mark Turin is a settler scholar and an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Trained in anthropology and linguistics, Mark is cross-appointed between the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Of Italo-Dutch heritage and raised in the United Kingdom, Mark has been working with Indigenous communities on collaborative language documentation and revitalization projects in Nepal, Bhutan and Northern India since the early 1990s, and in western Canada since 2015. He writes and teaches on language reclamation, revitalization, documentation and conservation; language mapping, policies, politics and language rights; and archives, digital tools and technology.

References

Anderson, Greta. 2020. “Accessibility Suffers during Pandemic.” Inside Higher Ed, April 6, 2020. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/06/remote-learning-shift-leaves-students-disabilities-behind. Archived at: https://perma.cc/2YG5-NQGH.

Anderson, Jane, and Kimberly Christen. 2013. “‘Chuck a Copyright on It’: Digital Return and the Possibilities for Traditional Knowledge Licenses and Labels.” Museum Anthropology Review 7 (1–2): 105–26. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/article/view/2169. Archived at: https://perma.cc/LJ8U-CWTW.

Bartolic, Silvia, Neil Guppy, Lisa Chang, and Hailey Craig. 2020. “Lessons for Higher Education from the COVID-19 Transition to Online Teaching and Learning.” Presentation at the International E-Symposium on Remote Teaching for Student Well-Being Under COVID-19, August 18, 2020, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Carpenter, Jennifer, Annie Guerin, Michelle Kaczmarek, Gerry Lawson, Kim Lawson, Lisa P. Nathan, and Mark Turin. 2021. “Locally Contingent and Community-Dependent: Tools and Technologies for Indigenous Language Mobilization.” In Indigenous Languages and the Promise of Archives, edited by Adrianna Link, Abigail Shelton, and Patrick Spero, 125–55. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Cavanagh, Sarah Rose. 2020. “How I’m Spending My Pandemic Summer Vacation.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 9, 2020. https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-im-spending-my-pandemic-summer-vacation. Archived at: https://perma.cc/9V9K-49B6.

Champagne, Eric, and Aracelly Denise Granja. 2021. “How the COVID-19 Pandemic May Have Changed University Teaching and Testing for Good.” The Conversation, April 6, 2021. https://theconversation.com/how-the-covid-19-pandemic-may-have-changed-university-teaching-and-testing-for-good-158342. Archived at: https://perma.cc/EQP8-77LL.

Chew, Kari A. B. 2021. “#KeepOurLanguagesStrong: Indigenous Language Revitalization on Social Media during the Early COVID-19 Pandemic.” Language Documentation & Conservation 15 (April): 239–66. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24976.

Chew, Kari A. B., Onowa McIvor, Iris (Kahtehrón:ni) Stacey, Aliki Marinakis, Barbara Jenni, and Melpetkwe Matthew. 2020. “How Is COVID19 Impacting Indigenous Language Revitalization?” Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, NEȾOLṈEW̱. MPEG-4 video, 2:18. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/12210.

Cullis-Suzuki, Severn. 2020. “Quarantine as Ceremony: COVID-19 as an Opportunity to Quietly Rebel against the Dominant Langscape.” Langscape Magazine, July 22, 2020. https://terralingua.org/langscape_articles/quarantine-as-ceremony-covid-19-as-an-opportunity-to-quietly-rebel-against-the-dominant-langscape/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/ZE3P-XEK8.

Daigneault, Anna Luisa. 2020. Learn Languages Online: A Guide to Studying Endangered, Under-Resourced and Minority Languages. Salem, OR: Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

Darby, Flower. 2020. “5 Low-Tech, Time-Saving Ways to Teach Online During Covid-19.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 14, 2020. https://www.chronicle.com/article/5-Low-Tech-Time-Saving-Ways/248519. Archived at: https://perma.cc/U9BZ-K7ER.

Enari, Dion, and Jacoba Matapo. 2020. “The Digital Vā: Pasifika Education Innovation during the Covid-19 Pandemic.” MAI Journal: A New Zealand Journal of Indigenous Scholarship 9 (4). https://doi.org/10.20507/MAIJournal.2020.9.4.2.

Eisen, Erica X. 2020. “Indigenous Activists Are Reimagining Language Preservation Under Quarantine.” Slate Magazine, August 10, 2020. https://slate.com/technology/2020/08/indigenous-groups-language-preservation-pandemic.html. Archived at: https://perma.cc/794M-Y7MP.

Galla, Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu. 2016. “Indigenous Language Revitalization, Promotion, and Education: Function of Digital Technology.” Computer Assisted Language Learning 29 (7): 1137–51. http://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2016.1166137.

Heydon, Rachel M. 2007. “Making Meaning Together: Multi-Modal Literacy Learning Opportunities in an Inter-Generational Art Programme.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 39 (1): 35–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270500422665.

Hogan, Kelly A., and Viji Sathy. 2020. “8 Ways to Be More Inclusive in Your Zoom Teaching.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 7, 2020. https://www.chronicle.com/article/8-Ways-to-Be-More-Inclusive-in/248460/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/5XK7-KAPN.

Johnson, Wintre Foxworth (@wintrefjohnson). 2021. “I am trying to enact a pedagogy of grace in my class (and really all the classes I’ll one day teach).” Twitter, May 10, 2021. https://twitter.com/wintrefjohnson/status/1445529415241256966.

Maestro, Lara, Sarah Dupont, and Alexandra Friesen. 2019. “Indigitization at the Cultural Interface.” Roundup (275): 4–9.

Mayer, Tara. “On Feeling and Knowing: Radical Conversations about Teaching and Learning.” https://pwias.ubc.ca/playlist/on-feeling-and-knowing/.

McIvor, Onowa, Kari A. B. Chew, and Kahtehrón:ni Iris Stacey. 2020. “Indigenous Language Learning Impacts, Challenges and Opportunities in COVID-19 Times.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 16 (4): 409–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180120970930.

McIvor, Onowa, Andrea Sterzuk, and William Cook. 2020. “i-kiyohkātoyāhk (We Visit): Adapting nēhiyawēwin/nīhithawīwin (Cree) Language Learning to the COVID-19 Reality.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 16 (4): 413–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180120970938.

McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

McPhee, Siobhán, and Katherine Lyon. 2020. “Teaching for Student Resilience: Feedback from Students on the COVID-19 Transition to Remote Education.” Presentation at the International E-Symposium on Remote Teaching for Student Well-Being Under COVID-19, August 18, 2020, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

McPhee, Siobhán Rachel, Katherine Lyon, Adriana Briseno-Garzon, Trish Varao-Sousa, and Bruce Moghtader. 2020. “Student Voices on Remote Education in the COVID-19 Era: Recommendations for Fall Based on Student Self-Reported Data.” Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.28175.20641.

Nordmann, Emily, Chiara Horlin, Jacqui Hutchison, Jo-Anne Murray, Louise Robson, Michael K. Seery, and Jill R. D. MacKay. 2020. “10 Simple Rules for Supporting a Temporary Online Pivot in Higher Education.” Preprint, last edited June 21, 2021. PsyArXiv Preprints: 1–25. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qdh25.

Peycam, Philippe. 2021. “Imagining the University in the Post-COVID World.” International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 88 (Spring). https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/imagining-university-post-covid-world. Archived at: https://perma.cc/9UJ8-VM6K.

Pine, Aidan, and Mark Turin. 2017. “Language Revitalization.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, edited by Mark Aronoff. Oxford University Press, March 29, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.8.

Rosa, Jonathan. 2020. “Language Legitimacy and Imagining New Educational Contexts with Jonathan Rosa.” We Teach Languages, no. 142, June 12, 2020. Interview by Dorie Conlon Perugini. Produced by Stacey Margarita Johnson. Audio podcast, 38:30. https://weteachlang.com/2020/06/12/142-with-jonathan-rosa/.

Rosenblum, Daisy. 2021. “Virtual Visits: Indigenous Language Reclamation during a Pandemic.” Globe and Mail, March 15, 2021. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-virtual-visits-indigenous-language-reclamation-during-a-pandemic/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/CNX3-8DJ9.

Tobin, Thomas J. 2020. “Now Is Not the Time to Assess Online Learning.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 25, 2020. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Now-Is-Not-the-Time-to-Assess/248343. Archived at: https://perma.cc/ET9B-FYEX.

Turin, Mark. 2021. “From Orality to Open: Innovations in Multimedia Monograph Publishing in the Humanities.” Pop! Public. Open. Participatory 3. https://popjournal.ca/issue03/turin. Archived at: https://perma.cc/9249-625G.

Turin, Mark. 2019. “Ownership, Control, Access & Possession in Open Access Humanities Publishing.” ScholarLed, October 21, 2019. https://blog.scholarled.org/ownership-control-access-possession-in-oa-humanities-publishing/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/EP55-62CP.

Turin, Mark, and Aidan Pine. 2019. “Using Technology to Help Revitalize Indigenous Languages.” OUPblog, June 24, 2019. https://blog.oup.com/2019/06/using-technology-help-revitalize-indigenous-languages/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/8JAT-3D8Z.

University of British Columbia. 2021. Indigenous Peoples: Language Guidelines. https://assets.brand.ubc.ca/downloads/ubc_indigenous_peoples_language_guide.pdf. Archived at: https://perma.cc/7KCY-VLKL.

University of British Columbia. n.d. “Teaching Online: Guiding Principles.” Accessed May 27, 2021. https://keepteaching.ubc.ca/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/3YW9-R5NB.

Waterfall, Hilistis Pauline. 2020. “Precedented Times: A Personal Reflection from Hilistis Pauline Waterfall.” Coastal First Nations, May 4, 2020. https://coastalfirstnations.ca/precedented-times-a-personal-reflection-from-hilistis-pauline-waterfall/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/4QR3-YM2R.

Wilkes, Rima, Aaron Duong, Linc Kesler, and Howard Ramos. 2017. “Canadian University Acknowledgment of Indigenous Lands, Treaties, and Peoples.” Canadian Review of Sociology 54 (1): 89–120. https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12140.

Zimmerman, Jonathan. 2020. “Coronavirus and the Great Online-Learning Experiment.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2020. https://www.chronicle.com/article/coronavirus-and-the-great-online-learning-experiment/. Archived at: https://perma.cc/M7WP-YQKM.