| Summary: | The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations include a call to build student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2015). Over the last few years, we have seen movements to “indigenize” or “decolonize” university curricula. However, what does this mean for faculty and students who view their discipline as agnostic to social issues? This work explores three questions. How do we improve students’ intercultural understanding in the context of our courses? How do we measure the effectiveness of our interventions which address non-computing concepts? What are the opinions of students in regards to including indigenous perspectives, knowledge, and issues in science courses? In this presentation, we briefly describe our experiences as well as reflect on the challenges encountered and present practical suggestions for faculty. The primary focus of this presentation will be to report on a survey that we conducted at the beginning and end of the course to ascertain students’ awareness of, understanding, and attitudes about indigenous knowledge, perspectives, issues, and peoples. The survey is adapted from the Assessing Student Awareness of Indigenous Peoples survey (Godlewska et al., 2017). A commonly held view is that indigenous perspectives and ways of learning have no connection or relevance to science. In this talk, we also examine student opinions on the relationship between computing and indigenous perspectives, knowledge, and issues. References Godlewska, A., Schaefli, L., Massey, J., Freake, S., Adjei, J. K., Rose, J., & Hudson, C. (2017). What do first-year university students in Newfoundland and Labrador know about Aboriginal peoples and topics? The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe Canadien, 61(4), 579–594. Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (2015). Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action. Government of Canada.
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