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The Yekooche First Nation and Royal Roads established a community-based learning centre to provide e-learning-based training in a centrally-located, shared space in the community to assist band members as they prepare for self-governance in a post-treaty environment. Technology-enhanced learning had the potential to make both formal and informal learning in the Yekooche community more accessible, relevant, and culturally meaningful. This study sought to determine and understand the most effective ways of using a cluster-based learning model in the Community Learning Centre to fulfill this potential.
The research, funded specifically by the Canadian Council on Learning, was designed to investigate how cluster-based learning in the Yekooche Learning Centre, could be most effectively used to support community project development within the Yekooche First Nation. Using participatory action research methods and a four-stage Appreciative Inquiry methodology, the project examined the key characteristics of a teaching and learning model that was developed to support learning in the Centre. As well, the project examined how technology-enhanced learning strategies can be implemented and sustained in a culturally-relevant and inclusive manner.
The results from the study provided insights into how a cluster-based learning infrastructure can be developed and evolved that effectively helps community members access and use technology to support learning and community development. According to the findings, the Learning Centre has emerged as a very important and central place within the Yekooche community and resulted in a number of notably positive benefits for community members such as its role in encouraging skill development, the establishment of individual and community projects, increased access to other outside resources and support for cultural development and ongoing learning, the formation of a community gathering place, and the opportunity to showcase experiences and impact with outside organizations. A wide range of both individual and, more recently, group projects have been produced that feature media-rich elements such as video, audio, graphical, and textual elements that have been enhanced by the skills participants have acquired in the Learning Centre.
Before the project was initiated, there was expectation that a cluster-based learning model would be used right from the beginning of the project to encourage and motivate collective participation in the Centre’s activities. In reality, this was not the case. One of the key insights not anticipated at the onset of this study was the importance of valuing and fostering individual engagement and curiosity intensely before the cluster-based learning approach could be encouraged and even supported later in the implementation process. The most successful approach to cluster-based learning that emerged from the study was based on helping individuals explore their own interests first, encouraging them to gain confidence in learning, and then, enabling them to form natural clusters with other learners who had shared interests.
Central to this process was the emergence and evolution of an approach to cluster-based learning that supported opportunities for participants to pursue their own interests, explore their curiosities, learn at their own pace, benefit from the support of Elders, and make connections to traditional ways of knowing and living in the community.
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