Learning about SEA remains difficult today from the US: few institutions offer courses with SEA content, and fewer still offer SEA-focused classes. Most students either study with non-specialists or travel beyond their school’s walls to learn about SEA. Proprietary firewalls restrict access to scholarly material for self-learners; so does the relative dearth of college- appropriate online OER resources. US DOE Title VI funding has generated impressive K-12 materials, but college-level students have far fewer online SEA resources to tap. Luce funding enables our team members to make more college-level SEA educational materials accessible to a broader audience online as educational resources (OER) and as credit-bearing courses.
Our three-pronged curricular development program draws equally from our social sciences and humanities faculty to produce a suite of materials for learning about SEA agrarian transitions. First, we develop alternative OER curricular materials for teachers to teach environmentally-themed topics; these can also be used for local outreach activities. Second, we develop language-specific teaching modules on environmentally themed subjects. Third, we develop SEA-focused credit-bearing online courses to offer through UHM Outreach College and supplement the extant SEA online curriculum taught annually.
1. Jaga Alam: Performance-Based Environmental Teaching (Kirstin Pauka: UHM Chair). This program brings bring Balinese visiting artists to collaborate with EWC/UHM faculty and student to develop new play scripts and theatre pieces (using traditional Balinese art forms) centered on environmental issues in Indonesia. Our collaborations produce performances for K- 12 schools in Hawai‘i, and OER for teaching and outreach, including teaching modules and streaming media.
2. Pamana ng Lahi: Philippine Indigenous Knowledge and the Natural World (Pia Arboleda: UHM Chair). This program uses ten traditional Philippine stories about social and environmental issues to produce digital Tagalog language pedagogy. Narration is in Tagalog with English subtitles; teaching modules are also created for each story. This project builds on previous Philippines environmental science- based online curriculum materials (e.g., Cebuano-themed Kadagatan, developed in 2012) and online animated teaching resources based on the Mountain Province that we developed from 2014-2016.
3. SEA Online Institute (Jonathan Padwe: UHM Chair). Embracing digital technology broadens our academic reach and fills existing gaps in university-level SEA studies. Our Online SEA Institute has two basic components: (1) new OER materials organized by topic for college-level instruction and education; and (2) a cluster of online SEA courses to survey social science perspectives on SEA agrarian transitions. Students who seek an introduction to SEA can also take courses like Barbara Andaya’s ASAN 202 (Introduction to South/SEA Studies), which will be posted online soon.