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Despite wellbeing being critical for individuals and communities to thrive in life and succeed in education, there is little research that investigates how Indigenous Australian youth attending universities conceptualise wellbeing. The purpose of this research was to empower the voices and agency of Indigenous youth attending higher education institutes to identify their construals of: the significance and nature of their wellbeing, the factors influencing their wellbeing, and the drivers and barriers to their wellbeing. Focus groups were undertaken with Indigenous youth (N=30) attending four Australian higher education institutions. The participants construed wellbeing as holistic, multidimensional, interconnected, collective, and subjective. Cultural identity, family and kinship, connection to Country, spirituality, having a sense of self, Indigenous student role models in higher education, and Indigenous staff support are facilitators of wellbeing. Factors such as racism and discrimination, lateral violence, non-culturally safe university spaces, family violence, “walking in two worlds”, and Indigenous community wellbeing when at risk, were identified as barriers to their wellbeing.

Participatory design seeks to involve users as partners in the design process. However, for traditionally disenfranchised groups participation may not be enough. Over the past year, we've worked with Indigenous leaders and end-users to develop a process by which HCI practitioners can pass the reins to Indigenous people to lead their own technology projects with the support of designers as needed. We present a brief summary of our experience and reflections on this budding user leadership process so far. We describe key steps (ie. user-led recruitment, user-leader training, and user-led workshops) as well as some challenges and takeaways, in order to contribute to the advancement of processes for Indigenous-led co-design, and user-leadership for the empowerment of disenfranchised communities around the world.

The article describes the teaching and learning framework that underpins a Kinship Online Module aimed at delivering online cross-cultural training at the university level. It is based on an existing workshop designed and presented to non-Aboriginal staff and students by Lynette Riley, a Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi woman from Dubbo and Moree. In doing so, this article reflects on the pedagogical framework and adopted learning environment, and describes how the project adopts a ‘cultural praxis’ approach that combines a social constructivist, problem-based immersive learning approach with five complementary pedagogical approaches. These principles underpin the designing of a program that embeds diverse Aboriginal knowledge into this online teaching resource.

This paper explores the lives of three New South Wales Aboriginal women, mothers, artists and academics. It will identify the women’s success in academia as demonstrated by their pathways to education, employment, job satisfaction, commitment and leadership experiences. In addition, the challenges they have faced, together with balancing family and community commitments and the importance and influence of mentors who assisted them on their pathway to success will be discussed. They employ Aboriginal methodologies that privilege Aboriginal ways of being, knowing and doing utilising a yarning methodology which is a culturally appropriate conversational process of sharing stories to develop knowledge and educate younger generations. In this way, they generate new knowledge on what works and why for Aboriginal women in academia, identifying historical pathways and platforms to success, revealing common significant influences in order to uncover key drivers of success and aspects of cultural and social life, which have enabled them as Aboriginal women to succeed.

Since its inception, Problem-based learning (PBL) as a process for learning and teaching has been used to enhance many skills based courses, including education programs at Bachelor College and the Aboriginal Technical Health Worker training program at the Centre for Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs. While PBL is an approach to learning and teaching which has been designed to provide a more holistic educational process for all students, Foster and Meehane (2007) suggest that many aspects of the courses are ideally suited for Indigenous students. In particular, this approach is useful when introducing students to a subject matter which is new both in being derived from another culture and not being accessible to Indigenous parents in the past. PBL provides a flexible approach to enable motivation and involvement of the students and their community. This paper considers the benefits of PBL for learning Information Technology and presents some course templates developed to support teaching Indigenous students at school.

Purpose This chapter outlines an audit process that led to a group of non-Aboriginal academics, and professional staff embarking on a journey to explore insights into Aboriginal knowledge and culture. It presents a compelling account of the benefits of a project devised by a creative Aboriginal teacher and community arts practitioner, The Embedding Diversity: Towards a Culturally Inclusive Pedagogy. Findings The Embedding Diversity project allowed a reflective and process-based deep learning to occur which enabled practical and meaningful Reconciliation to transpire between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff at an Australian University. Within the Faculty of Education and Social Work, staff collaborated with, listened to, and were taught by Aboriginal people in a range of contexts. Through this partnership, training, engagement, and conversations were had that shifted perspectives and changed thinking. Practical implications The outcome of this project was a commitment to change and advocacy for cultural competence to embedding stronger and more informed Aboriginal education, Aboriginal Studies Units of Study (subjects), and perspectives in teacher education curriculum. We present this project as it is reflective of the meaningful Reconciliation and educational reform which may be possible in other learning communities.

Purpose: This chapter outlines the successful community engagement process used by the authors for the Kinship Online project in the context of Indigenous methodological, epistemological, and ethical considerations. It juxtaposes Indigenous and western ways of teaching and research, exploring in greater detail the differences between them. The following chapter builds on and extends Riley, Howard-Wagner, Mooney & Kutay (2013, in press) to delve deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge in curriculum at the university level. Practical implications: The chapter gives an account of an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLTC) grant to develop Indigenous Online Cultural Teaching and Sharing Resources (the Kinship Online Project). The project is built on an existing face-to-face interactive presentation based on Australian Aboriginal Kinship systems created by Lynette Riley, which is being re-developed as an online cultural education workshop. Value: A key consideration of the researchers has been Aboriginal community engagement in relation to the design and development of the project. The chapter delves deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge into curriculum at the university level. In doing so, the chapter sets out an Aboriginal community engagement model compared with a western research model which the authors hope will be useful to other researchers who wish to engage in research with Aboriginal people and/or communities. Copyright © 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Background Metformin has been proffered as a therapy for adolescent obesity, although long-term controlled studies have not been reported. Objective To test the hypothesis that 48 weeks of daily metformin hydrochloride extended release (XR) therapy will reduce body mass index (BMI) in obese adolescents, as compared with placebo. Design Multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Setting The 6 centers of the Glaser Pediatric Research Network from October 2003 to August 2007. Participants Obese (BMI > or = 95th percentile) adolescents (aged 13-18 years) were randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 39) or placebo groups. Intervention Following a 1-month run-in period, subjects following a lifestyle intervention program were randomized 1:1 to 48 weeks' treatment with metformin hydrochloride XR, 2000 mg once daily, or an identical placebo. Subjects were monitored for an additional 48 weeks. Main Outcome Measure Change in BMI, adjusted for site, sex, race, ethnicity, and age and metformin vs placebo. Results After 48 weeks, mean (SE) adjusted BMI increased 0.2 (0.5) in the placebo group and decreased 0.9 (0.5) in the metformin XR group (P = .03). This difference persisted for 12 to 24 weeks after cessation of treatment. No significant effects of metformin on body composition, abdominal fat, or insulin indices were observed. Conclusion Metformin XR caused a small but statistically significant decrease in BMI when added to a lifestyle intervention program. Trial registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifiers: NCT00209482 and NCT00120146.

Teaching Aboriginal culture relies on individual teachers providing their particular perspective, yet cultural education is about providing a community perspective. This paper describes the design process for creating such an online system to share multiple experiences of Aboriginal Culture in New South Wales (NSW), Australia in a coherent and social-constructivist framework. The focus of the material is Aboriginal Kinship systems used for thousands of years in this region. This topic was chosen as the history of conflict through government policy, social inclusion and technology take-up has continually returned to issues of Kinship and cultural knowledge maintenance within respective societies, areas in which Aboriginal and European societies are markedly different. There is a pressing need to improve knowledge of Aboriginal cultural heritage and technology provides a novel means of sharing this understanding. Narratives from Aboriginal communities are used to augment an interactive face-to-face Kinship presentation which has been videoed and will be available as part of the learning material. Using innovative authoring tools, teachers will be able to select Aboriginal people's narratives that are relevant to their course of study, and map these to a range of scenarios being developed. The scenarios enable students to select ways they relate to the online characters, listen to various narratives, and become aware of their own role in the wider community, in relation to working for or with Aboriginal people. © Common Ground, Cat Kutay, Janet Mooney, Lynette Riley, and Deirdre Howard-Wagner.