Promoting Engagement Through A Student-Built Digital Atlas Of Maori Studies

We describe an educational intervention pioneered by Te Kawa a Maui (TKaM), the School of Maori Studies at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), which was designed to improve the attraction and retention of (particularly) Maori students, by involving them in a school-wide research publication - in this case a digital cultural atlas of Maori Studies. We present and describe the work of 250 students from 10 different Maori Studies courses, who have trialled and submitted map-based assessment for the Te Kawa a Maui Atlas (TeKaMA). We argue that the quality and variety of student work is itself an indication of engagement. We then discuss how digital aspects of the work facilitated engagement, using data from course and assignment evaluations, interviews, informal feedback and an online survey. In line with other findings in the literature, digital aspects of our project had to be carefully managed and balanced, so that they did not disengage students from learning. However, our TeKaMA exercises provided multiple ways by which students could engage, with cultural mapping engaging all students, not just Maori. Our chapter discusses how this was facilitated by digital technology.