Renewing a USask English course with Indigenous storytellers

By Kristen McEwen

One of the most popular courses in the Department of English is getting an update.

PhD candidate Olivia Abram is planning on increasing engagement and incorporating ethical use of generative AI for ENG242: Indigenous Storytelling of the Prairies.

Abram has been named as the recipient of this year’s Lesley Biggs Teaching Fellowship. The fellowship provides funding to a promising early-career instructor for a project that will help them improve or innovate as a teacher.

“It's always an exciting thing to be awarded funding for a scholarly project you're passionate about, but receiving the Lesley Biggs Teaching Fellowship is particularly satisfying because of its foundations in the legacy of innovative teaching and learning at the University of Saskatchewan,” Abram said.

She has also received the Gwenna Moss Centre Course Design and Development Fund to help with redesign efforts beyond the oral storytelling piece of the course.

Many students choose the ENG242 course to meet the Indigenous Learning Requirement as part of degree programs administered by the College of Arts and Science.

“The course needs to be able to function both as a safe and culturally-grounded spaces for local and non-local Indigenous students to engage deeply with storytellers and literary works that come from this place as well as non-Indigenous students who don’t have experience reading, listening to, or viewing Indigenous art and literature,” she said. 

The course was initially developed in 2002 by Métis Elder Maria Campbell and Dr. Kristina Bidwell, then re-imagined as an online offering by Drs. Janice Acoose and Adar Charlton, in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

“ENGL242 was originally designed to place Indigenous written literature within the context of a long and ongoing history of Indigenous storytelling in this place,” Abram said. “Because of the practical challenges of including oral stories and assessing student understanding of them and changing learning landscapes—such as student use of generative AI—this aspect of the course has been reduced over time, especially in the online version of the course.”

Through redesigning the course, Abram plans to interview and record local Indigenous storytellers to help students understand that engaging with literature means more than exclusively  reading novels, she said.

Students will have the opportunity to understand that engaging thoughtfully with Indigenous storytelling and storytellers helps create better stewards, visitors and learners on the land. With the redesign, the course can be offered in Fall and Winter Terms.

Abram also plans to incorporate generative AI into the course. While there is a lot of conversation about AI and an increasing dependency on the tool, Abram recognized it wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

“There are a few AI tools I really like, actually, and I think showing students the possibilities of developing their own critical thinking skills through AI rather than replacing their critical thinking with AI is important.”

She is turning to Native Land Digital, an Indigenous-led not-for-profit online organization, that recently launched an AI Territory Acknowledgement Helper bot named Kōrero—the Māori word for "discussion," "narrative," or "discourse."

“While I think writing an original statement of relationship to land and territory is an important step for students learning about story and place, Kōrero gives them a good place to start,” Abram said. “It gives three prompts to encourage the asker to reflect on their own position-specific relationship to the place they are looking up, for example, which is better than inputting ‘Saskatoon land acknowledgement’ into Google or other Gen-AI programs. Incorporating tools like these can be a way to showcase ways AI can be used positively and to further develop one's own thinking.”

Prior to becoming a graduate student, Abram taught high school English and had experience designing curriculum for her students.

“In academia, we tend to prioritize and celebrate research so much, but our research and teaching can and should inform each other,” she said. “This award will support me in further developing my skills in thoughtful, ethical course design, which is extraordinarily important as we face this new postsecondary teaching and learning landscape.”

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