Key Findings

The findings from the project identified a number of key factors about the ways that mapping enhanced students’ learning, including:

• Helping students to visually connect to the relationships between land, people, history and culture, and to visually connect to learning place names and specific landscape narratives.
• Providing a practical purpose for the acquisition of required skills in software and technology.
• Requiring students to participate in groupwork, learn from others, and share with their peers.
• Connecting students with lecturers and mentors who have a non-traditional skill set.
• Requiring students to be familiar with visual and spatial thinking techniques, such as GPS and mapping with Google Earth.
• Fostering students’ critical thinking when dealing with maps, visualisations and place data.
• Connecting students with outdoor land-based activities, such as purposeful archaeological site visits.
• Providing students with the tools and framework by which to explore the limitless possibilities of project topics in cultural mapping.
• The quantitative findings from the project also indicated that students generally rated their engagement with mapping higher than their engagement with technology, with both far less important than the kaupapa (topic).

Key Recommendations

The main recommendation from the project was:

Continue to explore place-based work | The way that students have responded to these technologies encourages Te Kawa a Māui – School of Māori Studies – to continue exploring how place-based work supplements and enhances the learning experiences of our students. Map-based assessment has the potential to enhance learning in any Māori studies programme, and to be used more widely in history and cultural studies.