Co-Designed Learning
Connecting Cultures is an Aboriginal-led, Australian Research Council-funded initiative that gives social work students immersive, safe-to-fail experiences with simulated First Nations Community members before they undertake fieldwork. Through virtual reality simulations and contextual eLearning, students practise culturally responsive engagement in realistic on-Country scenarios. They make decisions, encounter consequences, reflect, and try again in an environment where mistakes become learning, not harm.
The program is grounded in a single, driving purpose: to increase cultural responsiveness in social work students to reduce real-world harm to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. When students complete this program, they will have experienced what it means to listen before speaking, to follow before leading, and to understand that being on Country is a privilege that carries responsibility.
About the Artwork
Artist: Wanyubi Marika
Dhaŋum minytju bäpurruwuy, maŋutji rakaram yaka dhuwa
miyapunu ga ŋuyŋam Yirritja
miyapunu banha dhupal Yirritja ga dhuwa Yolŋu
banha nhuma yaka marŋgiyi Yolŋu romgu
(This represents the moiety of Yolŋu, Dhuwa & Yirritja.
The top dolphins represent Dhuwa Yolŋu, and the bottom dolphins represent Yirritja Yolŋu. The dolphins crossing in between are the students engaged in your program crossing into the Yolŋu world.)
Simulated Placement
Aboriginal-Led
Connecting Cultures was created from the lived experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples who have long sought to improve the relationship between Community and social workers. Their knowledge, their stories, and their authority guide everything in this program.
Co-Design Model
Community sovereignty is not a principle we apply — rather it is how this program was built. Every decision, every scenario, every design choice has been shaped and approved by the communities whose knowledge and lives are represented within it.
Immersive Experience
Students enter first-person virtual reality simulations set on Country, engaging directly with simulated Community members in scenarios designed to build cultural responsiveness, situational awareness, and reflective practice in a safe-to-fail environment.
Wrap-Around eLearning
Each simulation sits within a structured learning pathway. Contextual eLearning before, and guided reflection after ensuring the VR experience is part of a comprehensive practice-based journey, not a standalone event.
Co-Design Model
Community Learning
Five eLearning Modules
Although the original grant funding for these eLearnings was designed to assist social workers, the Community Modules invites all participants – across professions and backgrounds – to engage critically with the ongoing impacts of colonisation, and the strengths, governance systems, and knowledges that existed long before invasion and that continue in First Peoples Communities today. Co-designed with 91 First Peoples contributors from across Australia — including Yolŋu Elders and Community members from Yirrkala — these eLearnings will support anyone preparing to work with First Peoples and Communities.
International Perspective
Shayne Walker (Kai Tahu, Ngati Kahungunu, Associate Professor in Social Work at the University of Otago) talks with Susan Young (settler, Associate Professor in Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Western Australia) about what respectful engagement looks like in First Peoples Communities, and what it means to practice cultural responsiveness as a social worker.