It’s not often that a university lecturer crosses several time zones while giving a class, but for UQ’s Margaret Stephenson it’s become a regular occurrence.
Mrs Stephenson is part of a team that delivers a comparative Indigenous law course to students in Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand simultaneously with the help of new teleconferencing technology.
Mrs Stephenson said the approach was particularly useful for Australian students given the landmark Mabo ruling recognising native title took place as recently as 1992.
“We’ve had Native Title in this country for just over 15 years now, and for students to study the ways governments in other countries have dealt with their Indigenous peoples’ rights allows us to look at these responses and policies – very critically in some cases – and to learn from the mistakes and the successes that have been made,” she said.
The course is comprised of weekly seminars, with lecturers presenting PowerPoint presentations and audiovisual material via high definition webcams, and facilitating discussion by flicking between the screens of the six participating universities as needed.
The innovative approach is catching on internationally, with Mrs Stephenson and course co-founder Professor Brad Morse from the University of Ottawa recently giving a live demonstration from UQ to a legal education conference in China.
Professor Morse said team teaching in this way not only kept the content current and topical, but helped overcome any technical hiccups.
“What’s transpired for all of us who are teaching this is that we are much more familiar and expert in the situations that exist in the other countries now,” Professor Morse said.
“So even if we lose New Zealand say, and they’re leading that day’s class, we’re all comfortable enough with our knowledge that we can continue on that topic if one of the sites drops out.”
He said another benefit of the cross-cultural approach is that it allowed students to see beyond a simple “black letter” understanding of the law.
“The human element is perhaps is more evident here than in many others legal areas, because you’re talking about a distinct population or collections of populations that are interacting with a broader society on many levels.
“This area of law impacts on all kinds of things, whether that is regarding child welfare in the current Northern Territory intervention, the protection of sacred sites under cultural heritage legislation, dealing with harvesting rights issues or recognising customary law in the context of criminal sentencing.”
The change over from expensive ISDN lines to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has allowed a growing number of universities to become involved since the course began seven years ago, with UQ offering the subject since 2006.
And despite scheduling some 7am lectures to accommodate the time differences, Mrs Stephenson said feedback had been consistently positive.
“Students enjoy this course, and they gain a great deal by being exposed to a wide range of Indigenous issues in the various jurisdictions.
"Broadening their knowledge of what is occurring elsewhere allows our students to be better placed in their future careers to deal with evolving Indigenous legal rights in Australia."
LAWS 5135 / 7135 Law and Indigenous Peoples is next offered at UQ in Semester 1, 2008, and will be taught concurrently with the University of Ottawa, University of Saskatchewan, University of Oklahoma, University of Auckland and Monash University.
Media: Mrs Stephenson (07 3365 8518, 3365 1498, m.stephenson@law.uq.edu.au) or Cameron Pegg at UQ Communications (07 3365 2049, c.pegg@uq.edu.au)
