Course Structure and Exercises

Course Structure

The Specific Claims Research Course consists of eight chapters, each requiring you to read through a series of smaller units, view images and short video excerpts, and complete short exercises.


The course is intended to be self-directed and designed to allow you to proceed at your own pace. We recommend you spend approximately two hours per chapter and three to four hours on Chapters 4 and 5. In the summary units of each chapter, you will be asked to complete and submit a chapter evaluation.


If you have technical trouble with any aspect of the course or have questions about the content or individual assignments, contact the course administrator by email and we will do our best to respond within two days.

courseadministrator@ubcic.bc.ca


Student Exercises

There are four types of student exercises in this course:

  1. Quizzes
  2. Assignments
  3. Conducting Community Research
  4. Saving Document Examples



1. Quizzes

Quizzes are short, skill testing multiple choice questions.
Each quiz is embedded in a corresponding chapter unit and is completed online.
Follow the instructions to complete each quiz and access the correct answers.


2. Assignments

Assignments are practice question and answer exercises that you will save to a folder called My Saved Assignments on your computer. The assignments are essential components of the course. They are designed to help you understand key concepts and practice working with the electronic resources and archival materials introduced in each chapter.


To prepare for the course, you must download the My Saved Assignments folder to your own computer's desktop. You will find details of this below. The folder contains 19 numbered assignment documents in PDF format and a fillable PDF that you can use to create your own notes. Throughout the course, you will be directed to open an individual assignment located in this folder, follow the instructions, enter your answers in the space provided, and save the completed assignment for your own future reference. In some instances, you may be asked to print the assignment to have it on hand when navigating a particular website or image.


3. Conducting Community Research

Conducting Community Research involves practice assignments that ask you to gather information about your own community and save to a document called My Community Research. The course provides regular opportunities for you to conduct research pertaining to your own First Nation and save this information for future use. Like the assignments, conducting community research is integral to the course. To complete the community research exercises, you must download the document titled My Community Research and save it to your computer's desktop. You will find details for doing this below.


My Community Research is a large booklet in MS Word format. The booklet is divided into several sections. As you proceed through the course, you will be prompted to open the document and complete a particular section by following the given instructions.


4. Saving Document Examples

Here you will find details for downloading the assignments and community research document mentioned above.
The course also provides opportunities to save individual documents that you may continue to find useful when the course has ended to a folder called My Saved Resources.
All of these folders are contained within the compressed or 'zip' folder of student exercises.


Click on the blue icon below, select 'save file' and click 'OK' to download a compressed folder containing the course exercises mentioned above. The folder is called 'StudentExercisesSept2016(ReaderEnabled)V1'. You will notice this is version 1 (V1). Any subsequent changes or additions will be identified with another version number and you will be notified to download the new version.


Once you have downloaded the zip folder, double click to unzip and follow the instructions in the Folder Extraction Wizard, selecting the destination for the folder, 'StudentExercisesSept2016(ReaderEnabled)v1', as your desktop.


If you are unable to extract the above files because you do not have file extraction software, WinZip will allow you to open the compressed folder containing the course exercises and evaluation forms. Click the link below to access a free WinZip trial download. This is a time limited, 45 day trial, but should be more than adequate for the one time download needed for the course.

Download WinZip by clicking here


Course Evaluation

The course assignments will not be graded. However, each chapter summary asks you to complete a short evaluation form which you can submit online. There is also a final evaluation in the course summary. You will receive a Certificate of Completion at the end of the course after you have submitted the final course evaluation.


Terminology

Throughout the course, the terms "Government of Canada" and "federal government" are used interchangeably.


The term "colonial government" is used to refer to the governing authority of the lands now known as British Columbia prior to Confederation in 1871.


The term "Crown" refers to either the federal or provincial government in its capacity representing the British monarch (Canada's official Head of State).


The term “Indian” refers to individuals and groups recognized as “Status Indian” under the Indian Act. The term "band" is defined under the Indian Act and is used interchangeably with "First Nation".


Glossary of Terms

Right click and open the link in a new window to view UBCIC's glossary from Stolen Lands, Broken Promises: Researching the Indian Land Question in British Columbia.


Stolen Lands, Broken Promises Glossary.



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