Two of the Billings, Mont., cohorts are Ruthie Shoulderblade and Francine Spang Bear Don’t Walk. Photo by Phil Bell

New distance learning technology creates a danger of dehumanizing students and instructors. When American Indian students in reservation communities are involved in distance education, there are additional challenges as they seek to advance their education without the sacrifice of leaving their homes, cultures, and extended family systems. The Montana Consortium is an organization of three tribal colleges and a small, private, liberal arts college. Despite extreme distances between these colleges and severe climate conditions of the Northern Plains, the consortium has discovered various ways to keep the human being in the educational process, and its findings might be useful to others.

The majority (84 percent) of the 32 tribally-controlled colleges in the American Indian Higher Education Consortium are two-year degree granting institutions. Their missions are to serve their Native communities and to provide access to post secondary opportunities in a culturally relevant educational environment. It takes considerable creativity to find ways to meet the needs of these students who live in some of the most rural and geographically isolated communities in this country. With distance learning technology, tribal colleges can provide more access to baccalaureate degrees in these remote areas through collaboration with four-year degree granting colleges.

To facilitate collaboration, the Montana Consortium is developing and implementing distance learning opportunities. This consortium consists of Rocky Mountain College (RMC) in Billings and three tribal colleges: Fort Peck Community College (FPCC) in the far northeast corner of the state, Little Big Horn College (LBHC) in the southeast corner of the state, and Salish Kootenai College (SKC) in western Montana. In addition to the vast distances between these colleges (e.g. 528 miles between FPCC and SKC), there is considerable diversity in the individual distance learning technology initiatives at each of these colleges: Salish Kootenai College is the only one of the three tribal colleges with the capacity to provide programs using a satellite uplink at this time; the others can only receive programs via satellite. While SKC emphasizes developing a web-based course delivery modality, the other three colleges emphasize interactive video.

The distance education program between Fort Peck Community College (FPCC) and Rocky Mountain College (RMC) has been operating the longest. For the past four years, courses have been exchanged using an articulation agreement that they developed and implemented. RMC receives American Indian Studies courses in exchange for sending teacher education courses to FPCC students who are enrolled in the RMC Teacher Education Program. At the institutional level this arrangement is highly pragmatic and draws upon the strengths of both institutions: Faculty at the respective institutions don’t have to go through an adjunct appointment process; students don’t have to go to another campus to obtain needed course work.

From an academic perspective, the course exchange agreement allows students at these two campuses to participate in classes together through the distance learning technology. Predominately mainstream, Caucasian, Euro-American students interact with predominately Assiniboine and Sioux Indian students, each gaining a rich cultural exposure that would not occur in a typical, on-site classroom setting. A student in this program reported in her class evaluation, “One of the most interesting aspects of the class is the ability to interact with students at RMC. I really enjoy hearing their view points and reactions to topics.”

This Distance Learning Program has added an Applied Management Bachelor Degree program that is also delivered through a combination of interactive video and on-site instruction. The program now uses PictureTel operating at 128 kilobytes per second (two telephone lines). It plans to move to a compressed video system with better video and audio quality on T1 (six lines) in the near future. Program Director Janet Alberson said the combination of technology with on-site work is very effective. A student recently told her that the personal contact by faculty and staff made this program superior to other distance programs.

Focusing upon culture and relevancy

Tribal colleges and partner institutions face several hurdles when they design distance learning programs. Faculty must address the needs of various, specific cultural groups despite the physical distance between students and instructors that can foster a sense of disengagement or isolation. American Indian cultures represented in the Montana region remain relatively traditional in their cultural beliefs, values, ceremonies, and traditions. The student population served by the Montana Consortium comes from six cultural world views: Assiniboine, Crow, Kootenai, Salish, Sioux, and Euro-American. Tribal college faculty must learn to take tribal cultures into consideration, and this can be more challenging for faculty who are not based on reservations. Cultural influences include, for example:

• strong extended family and community ties as compared to a nuclear family system:
• a sense of tribal identity as compared to a more national or mainstream identity:
• an emphasis on relationships as compared to an emphasis on task orientation:
• an emphasis on sharing and cooperating as compared to the more individualistic values of mainstream culture,
•  a strong sense of humor; and,
•  culturally specific communication styles.

American Indians have a strong historic mistrust of mainstream culture (Lockhart, 1981). It is important for faculty members to be aware of this mistrust so that it is not taken personally. They must also recognize the significance of tribal affiliation and its importance to their students’ identities as Indian people. In a cross-cultural environment, instructors need to receive an orientation to the students’ specific tribal cultures and to initiate and facilitate discussions on sensitive matters of ethnicity, racism, and culture. Without awareness of cultural influences, instructors can further disenfranchise American Indian students and add to the dehumanization potential in the distance learning environment.

In our experience, instructors must also consider the reservation context when developing the curriculum and presenting it. This helps students relate to the concepts and theories being taught. For example, an instructor teaching a business course in “Human Resource Management” should analyze the tribal government’s employment practices, including what practices are effective and cultural values that are reinforced or de-emphasized there. This provides a sense of cultural context and relevancy. An underlying message is that students at each site are human beings, and their life context is critical to their learning process. Instructors must also carefully identify “tribal specific information” to avoid generalizing about different tribal groups.

Faculty members must experience the students’ cultural context in order to relate to them. One RMC faculty member moved to the Fort Peck Community College campus for a semester to absorb a cultural understanding of these students and the community in general. She now talks about the star quilt that she made while at FPCC and can share personal stories with the students at both institutions. In essence, this instructor is a bridge between the students at both campuses and facilitates their understanding and acceptance of each another.

Faculty members from both institutions are required to deliver on-site classes at least two times each academic term in addition to their classes delivered by interactive video. Visits to the distance learning remote site help instructors to develop a stronger sense of the context in which their students are being educated (e.g., tribal college or mainstream institution). Ideally, faculty members visit the remote site at the beginning of the term and again at midterm, more often if possible.

Dr. Ron Craig and Chris Wind Chief discuss distance learning in the Distance Education Center at Fort Peck Community College. Photo by Memories of Montana photographer Chuck Trinder

Building and maintaining relationships

Distance learning researchers (e.g., Simmons, 1991 and Ritchie & Newby, 1989) strongly advocate building relationships between instructors and students to facilitate learning. Requiring instructors to visit the other colleges helps. The first step in building a personal relationship is a face-to-face meeting between students and instructors, which helps to “humanize” the faculty member; she or he is not some remote being appearing on the video screen for an hour three times a week. Face-to-face contact improves rapport between students and faculty and facilitates classroom interaction. Students indicate that this helps them feel like they “know” their instructors. Fort Peck Community College student Chris Wind Chief said, “It helps 100 percent to talk to the instructor in person about any problems.”

Dr. Ron Craig, a FPCC faculty member, asks students to keep a journal for the first six weeks of class to record their impressions of the class content, technology difficulties (e.g., sound, distracting images or gestures, lighting), and anything else about the quality of the course and instruction. The journal is sent to the instructor periodically for his or her review. Dr. Craig said it helps build relationships between the instructor and the student. Each must respect the opinions of the other, trusting that his or her thoughts will remain confidential.

Research by Native educator, Dr. K. Swisher and her colleague, D. Deyhle (1989) supports the use of cooperative learning methods and the need to foster a strong peer support base for Native students. Our distance learning model builds upon both of these concepts in a variety of ways, further humanizing the students and instructors. Instructors are encouraged to interact with students beyond the classroom using the telephone or e-mail or visiting in person. For example, a Rocky Mountain College instructor traveled to Fort Peck and spent the evening with the students, going out for pizza and visiting.

Students are selected for the Applied Business Management Program as a cohort with classes in a modular format. Being part of a cohort means the students are expected to take the same classes each academic terms with a minimum number of variations. The modular format means the classes don’t necessarily follow the semester or quarter format; classes are generally three to four credits and last five weeks. Students are immersed in each class until completion with 24 semester credits each academic year.

Instructors actively seek to increase the collaborative learning exercises, breaking students into small groups for discussion and assignments. They emphasize shared learning and helping one another, practices compatible with Northern Plains tribal cultural values. This approach greatly facilitates discussion and interdependence among students. Program Director Alberson said they strive for 60 percent interactive exercises and 40 percent lecture in modules. Alberson said the peer support helps students through the academic challenges of a rigorous program and provides an opportunity for developing life-long friendships.

On-site facilitators are critical to this distance learning model. These facilitators team with instructors and site coordinators to provide the optimum learning environment. They operate equipment so that student and faculty presenters do not have to worry about it, making it as invisible as possible to avoid disrupting the class’s focus. While the facilitator works with the equipment to get the best camera angles, the instructor concentrates on the class material and the students. The facilitators greatly enhance communication within the classroom and between sites.

The facilitator’s work begins prior to every class, talking with the instructor prior to every class to find out what is expected from him or her and then conveying news to the students as they arrive. Facilitators are trained in the use of the equipment and elementary trouble shooting. They are provided with telephone numbers for when they need assistance. In case of technology failures, facilitators video tape class sessions as a back up. Facilitators are also responsible for distributing handout materials, collecting homework assignments, and proctoring tests. The facilitator contributes significantly to this learning environment and to the students’ sense of belonging.

Building relationships depends upon effective communication, including all exchanges of information–verbal and nonverbal. As previously discussed, this process is culturally influenced. When communicating with a person from a different culture, one needs to be aware of both the student’s and the teacher’s cultural contexts to be effective (Dodd, 1987). Challenging in face-to-face exchanges, communication can be even more difficult when teaching through distance learning technology because of the barriers to absorbing all the communication dynamics.

Some authorities in the field of communication (e.g., Condon & Yousef, 1975; Ramsey & Birk, 1983) believe that 60 percent to 70 percent of communication is nonverbal, coming in the form of proxemics, kinesics, paralanguage, and high-low context communications. These are all involved in culturally-specific expectations of behavior, not all of which gets transmitted via distance learning technology. For example, instructors can miss some facial feedback that they would typically observe when teaching on-site. Experience has taught us to be conscious of this and acknowledge this to students.

Some of the communication challenges result from the quality of technology. For example, with the current system, there is up to a three-second delay at the remote sites receiving the interactive video transmission. This delay requires an adjustment that actually may work to the advantage of the American Indian students. The pause gives the speaker an opportunity to determine if his or her message was received before delivering more information. Sue & Sue (1990) have described some of the overt differences between American Indian nonverbal communication patterns and Euro-American styles of nonverbal communication. They say that American Indians tend to speak softly and slower while Euro-Americans tend to speak loudly and fast to control the listener. American Indians keep their gaze indirect while Euro-Americans have greater eye contact.

Instructors have also found a good sense of humor humanizes them to students and fosters understanding. Instructors who are not familiar with American Indian students often express surprise at Native students’ sense of humor. Images of the “stoic” American Indian quickly dissipate as they realize humor is an integral part of the culture, which is acknowledged formally and informally (e.g., Beck, Walters, & Francisco, 1992).

Future direction

As the needs of local and regional communities continue to develop, institutions must be prepared to respond with additional degree programs. The Montana Consortium plans to pilot a distance learning course this spring that will be part of an Information Technology Baccalaureate Degree next fall. The degree will involve all four institutions in delivering and receiving courses.

The Montana Consortium recognizes the critical need to continually upgrade our technology. As technology advances, so must our teaching abilities. We must assist faculty members in learning how to develop courses or modify existing curriculum for a distance learning delivery format. Technology tools that can increase teaching effectiveness continue to be developed, and instructors need to be provided with time to learn how to use these tools.

The Montana Consortium has plunged in and embraced the potential offered by distance learning technology. At the same time, we continue to seek ways to focus upon the human beings– both students and instructors.

Deborah Wetsit is an enrolled member of the Assinboine Nation with a doctorate in counseling and a masters degree in higher education. Since January 1998, she has been the Distance Learning Coordinator for the Montana Consortium. This article was written with the assistance of Clarabeth Johnson, director of the Montana Consortium, and Janet Alberson, director of the RMC Degree Completion Program.

References

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Condon, J. C. & Yousef, F. (1975). An introduction to intercultural communication. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Dodd, C. H. (1987). Dynamics of intercultural communication. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown Publishers.

Lockhart, B. (1981). Historic distrust and the counseling of American Indian and Alaska Natives. White Cloud Journal, 2(3), 31-34.

Ramsey, S. & Birk, H. (1983). Preparation of North Americans for interaction with Japanese: Considerations of language and communication styles. In D. Landis & R. W. Buslin (Eds.), Handbook of Intercultural Training: Volume III. New York: Pergamon.

Ritchie, H. And Newby, T. J. (1989). Classroom lecture/discussion vs. live televised instruction: A comparison of effects on student performance, attitude, and interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education 3(3), 36-45.

Simmons, I. V. (1991). Survey of students’ attitudes toward the IHETS delivery system. ERIC Document Reproduction Services ED 330 311.

Sue, D.W. & Sue, D. (1990). Counseling the culturally different: theory & practice, (2nd Ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Swisher, K. and Deyhle, D. (August l989, special issue). The styles of learning are different, but the teaching is just the same: suggestions for teachers of American Indian youth. Journal of American Indian Education, 1-28.