Description

In the era of Truth and Reconciliation (TRC), educational administrators have a responsibility to answer the Calls to Action to transform post-secondary education, to increase access for Indigenous learners and decreasing education disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous learners (TRC, 2015a). If distance education is an option for expanding educational opportunities, online learning environments should be scrutinized to ensure learner engagement and meaningful support for Indigenous students. This thesis uses a Community of Inquiry (CoI) (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000) framework to examine existing literature and to frame the voices of 21 Indigenous participants about their experiences of supports, preferences, and online best practices. By exploring, understanding and incorporating what may be unique preferences, cultures, languages, worldviews, and ways of knowing, mechanisms to transform distance learning environments to improve engagement for Indigenous students can be identified. With the aim of synthesizing potential findings with online best practices, it may be possible to transform online delivery and development to provide a rich educational experience for students., Indigenous learners, post-secondary, online learning, distance education, CoI, community of inquiry, Indigenous education, e-learning, student support, student retention