Transformative learning theory and dynamics of UCN’s approach to remote learning
As long as 40 years ago, Jack Mezirow (1978) introduced the transformative learning theory: “learning is understood as the process of using a prior interpretation to construe a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of one’s experience in order to guide future action” (Mezirow, 1996). Such a transformative theory offers insight into adult learning motivation and the significant changes after their completion of school education. Transformative learning theory is applicable to the dynamics of UCN’s remote learning approach with the integration of Indigenous contents to teaching and learning as well as collaboration between the university and its remote learning centers in the communities because most UCN students are adult learners with motivations to transform their lives through education. They have lived on the reserves for most of their lives and raised their children by full-time working before entering university. They believe that UCN can offer them better employability skills so that they will change their own and even their children’s futures. Most Indigenous students choose to go back to work for their own communities after graduation. As such, the transformative learning theory supports the Indigenous students’ learning motivation. Of course, learning about Indigenous tradition and culture, knowledge and history is part of the contents of UCN’s programs and curriculums.
Integrating Indigenous knowledge into various programs and curriculums has been UCN’s tradition and practice. Perso (2003) revealed that meaningful and relevant concepts relating to culture, family, relationships, land, nature, and familiar events with symbolic presentation are all conducive to Indigenous learning. Additionally, collaborative and work-based learning within an Indigenous setting develops Indigenous students’ communication, problem-solving, and conflict-resolution skills (OECD-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2019). Very recently, Moran and Moloney (2022) applied ten phases of transformative learning of Mezirow (1991) to explore how respondents’ beliefs, values, views, insights, opinions, and experiences impact their achievement in learning. They found that personal circumstances and growth, qualifications, career, and confidence also have impacts on the achievement of transformative learning among mature students during COVID-19. The study by Moran and Moloney also agrees with the study by Christie et al. (2015), which outlined that belief systems and social structures influence student learning as it develops their value systems, and disorienting dilemmas often challenge the validity of one’s values. Eschenbacher and Fleming (2020) explored such challenges for lifelong learning in their findings that critical reflection, disorientation, and disorienting dilemmas are the components of such learning in this COVID-19 pandemic situation. Opposingly, by applying transformative learning theory to his study on adult learning, Code et al. (2022) found that students’ decreased communication, motivation, and engagement harshly challenge their ‘making and doing’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. These researchers also found that the sharp disproportion in access and equity makes students most vulnerable and at-risk, which was the most concerning issue for educators. The findings of Code et al.’s study align with HRW (2020), which states that remote learning delivery challenges Indigenous students’ collective oral culture and social lifestyle, along with their lower-income and inadequate infrastructure, such as the internet connectivity and free space at their homes in remote communities, negatively affecting their learning quality during the COVID-19 (HRW, 2020).
Based on the literature revealed above, the ten phases of Mesirow’s (1991) learning model can confirm our concerns in this study–disorienting dilemma can shake Indigenous students’ beliefs and values in their own culture, influencing their experience of remote learning during COVID-19. This study shows that Indigenous students’ beliefs and values of their own culture, as well as their experience of remote learning, are in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis because they fear that COVID-19 infection might affect their education, which fits Mezirow’s model of the disorienting dilemma as a catalyst for transforming the learning process. If we follow Mezirow’s self-examination phase to interpret how students overcome the challenges of their uncertain beliefs and confidence in their education, we can understand why students prefer to live with family or in relations during their remote learning alternative ways of surviving the crisis in beliefs and values during COVID-19. Once adult learners take a critical review of their learning, they are more willing to improve their learning conditions by adapting themselves to the existing condition and continue with their remote learning, which is an alternative way of acquiring knowledge so that they can put it into practice in Indigenous contexts. As such, creating innovative remote learning tools can promote Indigenous culturally responsive knowledge acquisition. Such a proposition is supported by Cochrane and Maposa (2018), who found that addressing Indigenous students’ technological issues, barriers to personal interaction and educator support, and cultural suitability would increase their successful course completion in distance education. Through the current study, we see that the provisional learners build their self-confidence and competence from the COVID-19 crisis. Students’ recommendation for remote learning in the survey proves that the respondents rejuvenate themselves by offering various suggestions to improve UCN remote teaching and learning in the post-pandemic era. Such research structure is completely supported by Mezirow's transformative learning theory. Thus, this study constructs the questions with the mentioned five themes as a framework to explore the impacts of COVID-19 on UCN Indigenous students’ remote learning and well-being.
Before the pandemic, UCN had already provided remote teaching via video conferencing from its two campuses in Thompson and The Pas to students in the remote communities of Northern Manitoba. Indigenous students received lectures in UCN regional centers. Instructors also visited students in the regional centers. Even after the pandemic, UCN still offers remote teaching and learning for some of the programs in certain remote communities. Mezirow’s transformative learning theory is pertinent in remote learning both during the pandemic and post-pandemic. Receiving post-secondary education in their home communities provides Indigenous students with a culturally safe space for learning and they are highly motivated firstly because most students are adults from the communities, and secondly, band leaders and Elders provide guidelines and support to integrate Indigenous content into their programs and curriculums. Even during the pandemic, students from communities were able to take courses within their cultural environments through remote learning, which helped them maintain their well-being. If such remote teaching and learning could continue in the post-pandemic era, community students will be able to learn more effectually.
The Quadruple Helix model, Mode 3 university and dynamics of UCN’s approachEtzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1995; 2000) developed the Triple Helix innovation model as the interaction among university, industry and government, which is adaptive to innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth in the k-economy. The Quadruple Helix was later associated with Mode 3 knowledge production concept (Carayannis & Campbell, 2006). Thus, in 2009 and 2010, the Triple Helix model was conceptualized as the Quadruple and Quintuple innovation model by including civil society and environment in which the society is influenced by media and culture (Carayannis & Campbell, 2009; 2010; Carayannis & Campbell, 2021). Furthermore, scholars symbolically integrate and contextualize the Triple Helix in the Quadruple Helix, and the Quadruple Helix integrates and contextualizes in the Quintuple Helix (Carayannis & Campbell, 2021). As such, Cai and Lattu (2022) outlined that the Triple Helix and Quadruple Helix models are complementary and competing concepts, but the former excludes civil society as its analytical efforts. Thus, Nordberg et al. (2020) used the Quadruple Helix instead of the Triple Helix model as a conceptual framework in their study on community-based social innovation in a rural area. Universities generally have three core functions: teaching, research, and a third mission as outreach actions and initiatives such as democracy, civic education and innovation (Campbell & Carayannis, 2013). As a result, UCN’s approach of adopting the viewpoints of several government agencies, and Indigenous communities to its sustainable teaching and learning aligns with the Quadruple and Quintuple Helix in the discussion.
As is known, universities strive to produce scientific knowledge. However, the way in which knowledge is produced has undergone three modes. The Mode 1 universities exhibit the traditional teaching of prevailing knowledge that derives from philosophy without precise attention to the real-world use of knowledge and innovation, Mode 2 universities aim at knowledge creation for solving problems by using research outcomes for acquiring, transmitting and integrating new knowledge (Gibbons et al., 1994; Klein & Pereira, 2020; Carayannis & Campbell, 2021). The Mode 3 university is technologically innovative, which transfers knowledge to science and acts as a hub to implement knowledge and science to entrepreneurs, businesses and industries. These universities integrate diverse ideologies of knowledge creation and knowledge application with cheering diversity (Carayannis & Campbell, 2021). Such scientific knowledge is optimally utilized when a set of guiding principles is followed and carried out by knowledgeable actors (Stier & Smit, 2021). Thus, the Mode 3 university benefits from research-based innovative knowledge networking, products and technologies while maintaining traditional university functions (Skribans et al., 2013; Campbell & Carayannis, 2013). As such, a G3 or Mode 3 university significantly relates its academic functions to social and economic development with greater involvement in society and increasingly generating social, intellectual and human capital, making it an economically self-generating institution, which is also called an entrepreneurial university (Henry, 2001; Campbell & Carayannis, 2013). However, a recent study by Abidi et al. (2021) found that the national institutional framework, continuity of interconnections with local organizations, university’s supportive organizational infrastructure and accessibility of funding influence the university’s entrepreneurial engagement during COVID-19. As such, UCN uses inputs and processes to assemble all of its resources, aptitudes and competencies to produce culturally respectful and responsive skilled graduates who can contribute to their communities’ developmental goals. Such inputs include resources, cultures and university-community relations; and processes include blended and hybrid teaching, community-based participatory research and innovation; and the output includes producing skilled graduates with compelling research capabilities focusing on Indigenous community needs, innovations and networks. The outcomes meet the demands of Mode 3 university knowledge creation in Quadruple Helix innovation systems outlined by Carayannis and Campbell (2012). The features of UCN teaching and learning outcomes also align with the findings of a study by Salamzadeh et al. (2011), who outline that an entrepreneurial university applies its inputs and processes to produce desired outputs to fulfil its third mission, the mission of meeting the demands of the current job markets.
Moreover, UCN's university community-based participatory research, connections and support from various government agencies and stakeholders all focus on the Indigenous community's development, which is supported by the findings of Marta et al. (2022). Their study found that research in university-industry associations and the entrepreneurial capability of a university is becoming very prevalent within the literature on entrepreneurial universities. Thus, it can be deduced that UCN’s dynamic model aligns with the Mode 3 or entrepreneurial university model. As such, UCN’s programs and curriculums reflect and satisfy UCN students’ learning needs, in addition to Indigenous communities’ social, cultural, economic, technological and innovational developmental requirements. Such multidimensional education outcomes meet with the “Mode 3 innovation ecosystem” proposed by Carayannis and Campbell (2021), who have also turned universities and commercial firms into knowledge creators and practical users.
The Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (CASN) and the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada (ANAC) conceptualize cultural awareness as a reflection of differences and consider recognizing and respecting cultural differences as cultural sensitivity. Meanwhile, ANAC considers cultural awareness and sensitivity as empathy for others and their cultures (Hart-Wasekeesikaw, 2009). The US Office of Minority Health (OMH) defines cultural competence as the measurable and enforceable attitudes, behaviors and strategies in a cross-cultural workplace (OMH, 2001). Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada (IPAC) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) both outline that cultural safety provides Indigenous people with self-reflection competencies to develop a remedial atmosphere (IPAC-RCPSC, 2009). This agrees with Carayannis and Campbell’s (2021) Quadruple Helix including media and culture influence innovation and democracy. However, the above concepts of cultural elements suggest that Indigenous cultural awareness, competence, sensitivity and safety are mutually affected. Such a conclusion is supported by Australians Together (2023), which includes the critical interrelated features of land, family, language and law of Australian Aboriginals. A framework model in Fig. 2 explains the linkages of UCN’s education, Manitoba northern indigenous communities, employers, students, other related stakeholders, and Indigenous cultural elements with Mode 3 knowledge creation in Quadruple Helix innovation systems revealed earlier.
[FIGURE 2 HERE]
Research Questions
Labour market of Northern Manitoba needs an innovative and culturally responsive workforce. Therefore, it is crucial for UCN to prepare its students with knowledge through practical curriculums and programs delivered in a student-friendly mode, which meets the regionally required skills for the mainstream Indigenous population of Northern Manitoba. With such a diverse program, UCN provides online courses with remote delivery, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, UCN students, like Indigenous students in other universities, encounter infrastructural, technological, social, cultural and mental challenges that negatively affect their learning motivation and well-being. Thus, it is essential to understand the elements that are influential to UCN in making it a more innovative university. Only such an innovative university can accommodate students' learning needs in the future. Furthermore, integrating northern and Indigenous values into UCN curriculums and programs continuously improves learning outcomes. Indeed, educational and learning technology prepares UCN students with the knowledge required to meet culturally responsive socioeconomic challenges in Northern Manitoba.
The broad research questions are as follows:
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What are the factors contributing to making UCN a more local workforce-oriented and innovative university based on its students’ remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic?
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How can northern culture and Indigenous values be integrated into UCN curriculums and programs to motivate and engage UCN students in achieving learning success?
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How can UCN improve its learning technology and existing programs to prepare students for future socioeconomic challenges in Northern Manitoba?