The University of North Dakota’s Indigenous Health Doctoral students contributed to a Photovoice Research Project, which highlighted their perspectives on participating in a one-week seminar. Their findings were presented in an event, titled “Promoting Community: A Visual Journey of Indigenous Health Doctoral Students,” last Tuesday, Mar. 25, at the Memorial Union.
In attendance was Shawnda Schroeder, an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous Health at UND.
“My primary role is teaching and education for our students who are getting a PhD in Indigenous Health,” Schroeder said. “Additionally, I help and oversee curriculum design for our seminar program.”
The purpose of this research was to understand the experience of online-PhD students who are required to be on campus for a one-week seminar.
“The reason we wanted to study this was because our students in our PhD program, their program is entirely online, but we require them to be on campus for a week, two summers in a row,” Schroeder said. “In order to do that, these students have to give up working for a week, use their vacation time, [or] pay to travel; they have to give up a lot to be here. We wanted to make sure that this experience [is] necessary, important, and that there is value of having them on campus for a week from their perspective.”
The method of research used for this is referred to as Photovoice, a qualitative research strategy. It allows individuals, whose experiences someone is trying to understand, to explain and share their experience through photography and narrative.
“I aimed to capture the experience of being an Indigenous online student. Attending seminars has profoundly impacted our lives,” Gem Wilson, a research participant, said. “During the first seminar, I went alone for a week and left with a new family. My photos illustrate the bonds we formed and how my extended family (fellow students) support each other in various situations, from getting a car towed to supporting pregnant friends that are graduating.”
This permits conversations to flow so that further data analysis allows themes to emerge.
“Essentially, what we found was that attending seminar it was described as a form of medicine,” Schroeder said. “So, they described seminar as a healing space where relationships and a sense of community were established.”
Photovoice research is transactional, which means it is meant to be shared with the community so that individuals can interact with the results of the work.
“This event was a presentation of the data and an art exhibit. You can engage with a meal, conversation, and walk through the exhibit,” Schroeder said. “We had an opening welcome spoken in Ojibwe by Dr. Julie Smith-Yliniemi, and she grounded us in prayer and in a smudge.”
After the smudge, there were remarks from Jeff Holm, the acting dean of the graduate school, and Schroeder shared the results of the study.
“I’m hoping that students who were able to attend were able to recognize how important it is to create community among your peers in order to be successful in academia,” Schroeder said. “For students who were not able to attend, I would encourage them to look for future opportunities when we will share this artwork again across campus.”
Dylan Campbell is a Dakota Student Section Editor. He can be reached at [email protected].
