Building on Trent’s long-standing reputation as a leader and innovator in Indigenous education, the University has announced plans to partner with the University of Sudbury to offer two new online courses, the first of their kind in Canada, aimed at bridging the knowledge gap on urban Aboriginal issues.

The two unique Indigenous Studies courses will be accessible online to students across Canada beginning in September 2015. The half-credit courses, INDG-3201H Indigenous Peoples City as Home and INDG-3202H Selected Urban Aboriginal Topics, are being offered in conjunction with the University of Sudbury.

"Few courses in Canada are focused on urban Aboriginal issues, so we're excited to be offering these unique courses online," said Dr. Don McCaskill, a professor in Trent's Indigenous Studies department. "We hope to attract students from other universities as well as students within Aboriginal communities who don't have easy access to universities. Students from Toronto, York, and Ryerson should be especially interested in these courses because of their Toronto content."

The original course was designed by Dr. David Newhouse, associate professor of Indigenous Studies and Business Administration, and chair of Trent University’s Department of Indigenous Studies. Professor Newhouse worked in conjunction with Dr. Kevin Fitzmaurice, chair of Indigenous Studies at the University of Sudbury and Professor McCaskill to develop the course content. Professor Fitzmaurice is a former Trent University graduate student. Sudbury and Trent will alternate delivery of the courses over the next five years. At Trent, the courses will be hosted in the Blackboard Learning System, with the integration of a tool called VoiceThread, an online discussion board which allows instructors and students to discuss topics using audio, video or text.

“I am very excited about the development and teaching of these courses,” said Dr. Kevin Fitzmaurice, a professor at the University of Sudbury, Indigenous Studies department. “They are incorporating some of the most up-to-date and extensive scholarly research on this subject in conjunction with a diversity of video guest interviews with key leaders and practitioners in the urban Aboriginal community.”

Course content for INDG 3202H, which will be offered in the fall term, will be drawn from two major studies on urban Aboriginal experience: the Toronto Aboriginal Research Project (TARP), the largest study ever done on Aboriginal people in the city of Toronto; and the Urban Aboriginal Task Force (UATF), which examined Aboriginal issues in five Ontario cities, including Sudbury.

Indigenous Peoples City as Home, to be offered in the winter term, will be a comparative study of urban Aboriginal people in Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

The courses are divided into modules which allow students the flexibility to access them at any time. "The advantage of online courses is they can be offered to individuals who normally wouldn't take a university course, like someone with a full time job," Prof. McCaskill said.

The new courses are funded through a province-wide COU/MTCU grant. More information on the online courses can be found at: www.trentu.ca/indigenousstudies