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CDU Wins the Country's Premier University Teaching Award

  

30 November 2005

The award winners, from left: Michael Christie, John Greatorex, Betty Marrnganyin and Waymamba Gaykamagnu
The award winners, from left: Michael Christie, John Greatorex, Betty Marrnganyin and Waymamba Gaykamagnu
Charles Darwin University has picked up the Prime Minister’s Award for its Aboriginal language project. The Award, University Teacher of the Year – the country’s highest teaching award – is presented this evening at a ceremony in Canberra.  
 
An Aboriginal language project developed by a CDU team with Yolngu Aboriginal community leaders, has won the Prime Minister’s Award for University Teacher of the Year. This prestigious award is presented to an academic or team with an exceptional record of advancing student learning, educational leadership and scholarly contribution to teaching and learning. Each year the winner of the Prime Minister's Award for the Australian University Teacher of the Year is chosen from the winners of the Teaching Excellence Awards. 
 
The Prime Minister's Award is the premier university teaching award.  
 
The Yolngu Studies team comprises a group of senior Yolngu advisers from five major communities who guide the program, which has been developed over the past twelve years. 
 
The team is led by four Charles Darwin University lecturers, Waymamba Gaykamaŋu, Michael Christie, John Greatorex and Betty Marrŋanyin.  
 
The Yolngu Studies program is the only one available nationally or internationally where Aboriginal teachers teach their own languages and culture at vocational, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels under the supervision of their own community elders.  
 
Over ten years, the Yolngu Studies team has developed an extensive range of resources, utilising the skills which the four team members have developed over the past 30 years. These include: 
 
  • Nhanapinya Rakaranhami, a video and booklet made by a Yolngu co-worker which presents the story of identity of 18 different Yolngu from various clan groups in their own languages. These short, easy, but touching stories introduce students to the wide range of Yolngu languages and totemic affiliations, the kin links among them, and their deployment over the Yolngu lands.
  • Gupapuyngu Word List, a beginner’s dictionary of 2000 words, with Gupapuygnu–English and English–Gupapuygnu.
  • The CD library of Yolngu literature, containing 190 stories by 98 authors in 15 languages designed to allow students to explore Yolngu languages, history and culture through texts and images produced by Yolngu themselves.
The Gupapuygnu multimedia CD teaches and tests pronunciation and spelling, grammar at thirteen different levels, and presents three hundred stories of staged difficulty, a dictionary list of 500 words, and a kinship chart, which details links between all of the 44 Yolngu kinship terms on an interactive diagram viewable from the points of view of both genders and both peoples. All words and sentences are connected to sound files. This CD accompanies study notes and a reference book which can be used by external students who are working largely on their own, and taught by their Yolngu lecturers in Darwin. 
 
The Yolngu Studies online database contains illustrated text files, audio files and videos for public access and student use. See http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/yolngustudies/ and click online database.  
 
The Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) were established in 1997 by the Commonwealth Government to celebrate and reward excellence in teaching. They are open to all Australian universities. Further information visit: http://www.dest.gov.au/Ministers/Media/Nelson/2005/11/n2051291105.asp