Talk:Indigenous and Intercultural Health

10 November - Forking Off
Since I left at the end of 2013, I tried several times to maintain some momentum and continuity with La Trobe University about getting this resource ready for students and communities by 2015. I got little response. Several months later I was contacted by Deb McDonough from teh School of Nursing. I spoke at length and sent her the info needed to carry on, asking to be consulted if not employed along the way.

I've had a look at the site last week to find some very concerning changes have been made. Deb had claimed credit for the whole thing herself ('Development of this subject led by DMcD' etc). I thought I would automatically be notified about any edits made by anyone but apparently not. Such labelling other people's work as your own is not only unethical, it's academic suicide if it becomes public knowledge. The Wikimedia technology keeps detailed records of who does what and when. LTU staff can do whatever they like on their internal systems, but a public, open resource like this should be managed by original authors. Any derivative work also needs to acknowledge original authors (and original Australians).

An immense amount of 'market' and other research has gone into shaping this resource. It was created on the back of a lot of goodwill, donated time and other resources as well as a modicum of hard fought for funding from the School of Nursing at La Trobe. The videos were produced using volunteer actors from the pre-eminent Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO) and myself. VACCHO staff consulted with us and helped shape it to what it was on the clear understanding that it woudl always remain a public and community resource.

Karen Adams and I are officialled documented custodians of the videos within a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License agreement. No one has free reign to use them or anything else without acknowledgment. Professional courtesy would also involve communication, if not consultation about their usage. The time and expertise given by all to produce them was given on the clear and documented agreement that the modules would be pitched at the open community, not hijacked by a single discipline, school or institution. It is necessarily an open community resource, not a plaything for local self-interest and political squabbles.

I have reverted it back from what it had been degraded to- a LTU nursing-specific subject. This was not what was intended- we were and are aiming at a range of health and social care professions and a broad, if not global audience. Any locally or discipline-specific aspects were always intended to be located and managed on the internal La Trobe Learning Management System. The Wikiversity ethos is inherently designed to be a globally available and relevant resource. However last week I needed to refer people to it for use by local health and social care agencies. What I saw when I looked at it was irrelevant and alienating to those potential users. I would think the national nursing accreditation agency (ANMAC) and maybe internal LTU curriculum accreditation regulators would also need to be involved in any major changes to the course which they had already all approved last year.

In this light it seems the only way to match all needs is to revert it, particularly the central Indigenous module, to what it was. La Trobe University is free to use any content, with full acknowledgement, by 'forking' the content to another site and/or using internal systems. Dr Karen Adams is of a like mind- Karen please feel free to add comments here if you'd like to. --Nick8june (discuss • contribs) 01:46, 10 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Nick, I wanted to jump in here quickly, because some of the issues you raise are rather serious, and may come from a slight misunderstanding. I have been assisting Deb, as I did you, into this Wikiversity space. My job is to assist and advise in La Trobe's contribution to the development of this resource. The rationale of a shared community resource development, as set down by you and Karen by using Wikiversity, remains the governing principle for La Trobe's contribution. But as you experienced, and as Deb is now, we need to manage competing interests, on and off the scene here, as well as different expectations and experience levels. I take responsibility for the attribution oversight, as well as the sudden and dramatic shift in direction. I didn't deliberately obfuscate attribution to you or Karen, and am having to work hastily here. I tried to document our meetings and considerations toward that shift (below). Things like the Learning Objectives requiring adjustment to meet university and AQF standards, more of a Nursing focus asked by the School of Nursing at LTU, the La Trobe Indigenous liaison raising a number of issues, and other off-the-record decision points are what has led to this dramatic change. I know you and Karen where working to a particular brief, to the best of your ability with the limited resources made available. Importantly, when La Trobes initial contribution toward the development it was left at a work in progress stage, Deb was then directed to finish it under a particularly tight deadline, and during a troublesome restructure at La Trobe. All this is my attempt to apologise on behalf of Deb, myself and La Trobe University, for any offense caused to you, Karen, and partners in this development. Your suggestion to fork off the work, while an unfortunate compromise in light of the goal to directly collaborate, is probably necessary due to the tight deadline Deb is under. I'll create a new page NSG2IIH (sux to use the code) and copy the recent work to there and fully reinstate the status of the work you and Karen had done to date. Needless to say, by remaining in The Commons, you and anyone are free to reuse anything created on this new page. Hopefully it will be of some use, as your work is to ours. Please watch our development, as we will yours. All the best, Leighblackall (discuss • contribs) 02:44, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

21 October 2014
Deb, John and Leigh met to finalise the subject description, objectives and assessments. This second wave of development has reached its current deadline, but can continue through this wiki.


 * Leigh will upload the new description, objectives and assessment descriptions to wiki. ✅ old version here
 * Deb and Leigh to define assessment criteria and check alignment with the learning objectives.
 * Deb to prepare content and activities for the assessments
 * Deb to compile scenarios
 * Leigh to assist Deb in updating the La Trobe Course Info System

Deborah McDonough (discuss • contribs) 05:01, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

8 September 2014
Meeting with Maria, Melissa, Mick, Deb, Sharon (needed to leave early) Meeting and discussion of ILO's and subject description: Using Johns version of wording reviewed wording reviewed by Mick, decision to send to Indigenous team regarding wording ILO's to formulate modules: ILO 1 and 2 to formulate content for the first module: Intercultural health literacy, anthropology and health together develop assessments: discussion regarding assessments reduced to 3 assessments Mick to have a discussion with Mark Rose regarding concept of Indigenous Health literacy: review Marcia Langton works review lib guides and streamline into one Consultation with John: regarding online requirements, word count for percentage of assessment tasks and almagamation of lectures/face to face/ self directed learning to meet the university's requirement for blended learning

1 September 2014
Meeting with John, Maria, Deb, Sharon Discussion on ILO's and subject description; reworded by team sent out to all team members for review ILO's to formulate the 4 modules

27 Aug 2014
On the 25 August 2014 Deb, Maria and John met to discuss the development of the subjects. Apologies from Leigh The ILO's need redevelopment to align with the university requirements. Deb to send email to HOS to review if this equates to a minor ammendment for ANMAC: sent and under review by HOS and HOD for the School of Nursing and Midwifery. John to source definition of Intercultural Health from work by Marcia Langton (1993)as subject to teach constructs and concepts of Intercultural competence for Undergraduate Health Professionals.

Deb to formulate ILO's and reword description for review by John as a draft to align ILO's for subject. Meeting to be held on 1 September to discuss outcomes of queries regarding ANMAC requirements. Maria presented information from library search and sources that could be incorporated in the subject Follow up with Mick, Nellie and Jack regarding Wominjenka and what information is taught in this subject.

11 Aug 2014
Deb, Leigh, John and Maria net to take up the development of this subject. Leigh showed the workings of Wikiversity (and reasoning).

Discussion moved to types of assignments. Maria suggested asking students to locate their local indigenous representative, based on post code. Leigh extended by suggesting the collective effort of the students be captured in Google Maps. Students create bios for the centres, list them on a web page, then each create a map that pin locates and displays the bios. Each year's student cohort refreshes the directory. Furthering on this notion, is the idea of editing Wikipedia articles for indigenous language groups, and to each construct an acknowledgement of country that links to these language groups. We acknowledged the possible sensitivities of these assignments, such as Wikipedia possibly not being appreciated by some indigenous reps, or that Google Maps, or maps more generally, represent an intrusion on local knowledge.

Assessing the clinical settings for its sensitivity for indigenous people, including quality of service. Suggest improvements.

Develop a resource kit, that identifies the range of services and contact points that are open to indigenous people from the hospital and wider community setting. (Based on the prospect that nursing will split into acute and community care settings).

The closest relative subject to this is Multicultural Perspectives on Health and Wellbeing


 * Actions
 * 1) Deb to meet with La Trobe Executive Director Indigenous Strategy and Education, to advise on this project's progress 13 August and seek clarification on the assignment ideas above.
 * 2) Move enabling outcomes to assessment... edit Objectives to AQF standard (Level 6)
 * 3) Review assessments, reducing it less than 3 items, equaling ~ 3700 words overall
 * 4) Design workshops to help students progress their assessments
 * 5) Review content to aid workshops and teaching/study
 * 6) Locate and review the resources developed (videos)
 * 7) Maria to review development of lib guide and point to openly available copy; better still copy right...need to find convenient resource available on the open web
 * 8) text books: review
 * 9) next meeting proposed for 25 August..Leigh on holidays but available for consultation by the teachers of health professionals Google plus online community

Development directions
I've spent a couple of hours looking through this, while I copy it into an LMS shell at La Trobe. https://lms.latrobe.edu.au/course/view.php?id=31557

It hasn't been easy to copy in, and I think from memory it was a goal to be easy to copy across systems. The main obstacle has been the structure of elearning and workshops within topics within modules, and each topic having a participant guide and a teachers guide, which essentially repeat the same information. Also, the listing of resources in the topics before the activity instructions, which again repeat the resource items... ALso, I seem to have lost the ability to locate the URL of Flickr images.. I wanted to embed the images here and in the LMS. I'll look harder, and I think it would be wise to copy them into Commons in case Flickr get even weirder. Same with Youtube. Simplifying the structure, copying the graphics and videos, and then creating an LMS version would probably take a casual 20 hours. I'll see how much my bosses will let me throw at it. Leighblackall (discuss • contribs) 05:22, 20 May 2014 (UTC)



Curriculum concept drawings




AAA Open Conference Presentation
Dr Karen Adams and I presented to a recent Open Conference at La Trobe University on the development of this new resource. Notes and a recording of the 10 minute session can be found here: Wikiversity_for_Indigenous_and_Intercultural_Health Nick8june (discuss • contribs) 23:57, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Threshold Concepts
'Threshold Concepts' are the critical understandings needed to succeed and continue learning in a specific area. By definition, they are intended to challenge existing assumptions, but once understood, they transform the way you think about an important issue. In this subject they are the fundamental stepping stones needed to develop intercultural health competence.

Threshold Concepts for this subject

Wikipedia's related page

Images Needed
The development of this new subject is being coordinated by myself (Nick Stone) and Dr Karen Adams, an Indigenous health professional. It is multidisciplinary in design, will be required for several hundred nursing students each year, and is expected to be a popular elective across many other health and social care courses.

We're developing this as an open educational resource (OER) to enable Indigenous and other community stakeholders to have input and access to the learning resources.

One half of the learning activities will be done flexibly/online.

Nick8june (talk) 01:06, 2 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Nick8june.
 * I've summarised your criteria for imagery as follows:
 * Attractive (quality)
 * Diverse contemporary life
 * Indigenous and other Australian cultures
 * Health and well-being


 * I searched Wikimedia Commons and found these


 * Finding contemporary images in Commons is difficult, because older photos are out of copyright and so easier to find.


 * Flickr supports Creative Commons licensing, and you can find images there that are ok to copy across into Wikimedia Commons. Here's what I found searching that CC Attribution license collection:
 * "Indigenous Australia" (415 images)
 * "Aboriginal Australia" (814 images)
 * "Australian health" (199 images)


 * An Advanced Google Image search, where I'm asking for results that permit reuse came back with quite a few, but you need to be extra careful checking the copyrights before loading to Wikimedia Commons


 * If you find images you like, download them (noting the URL of the original page, and the original author), and upload them into Wikimedia Commons.


 * Leighblackall (talk) 02:00, 2 January 2013 (UTC)