Prospects and Challenges of Using Open Educational Resources to Teach Kiswahili for Foreigners: The Case of E-Kiswahili 4 All Online Course

Description

Technological advancements and sociocultural turns have encouraged language educators to exploit the use of ICT in teaching and learning. One avenue for this is the development of OER in language teaching where resources are designed and used freely under creative commons licenses. The use of OER in teaching languages, particularly Kiswahili, is underexplored in the research. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges of OER developed to teach Kiswahili to speakers of other languages. Drawing examples from the self-paced e-Kiswahili course developed to allow learners to study Kiswahili, we anticipate the course will promote the spread of Kiswahili, increase the number of Kiswahili speakers, and gradually re-centre Zanzibar as the locus of the Kiswahili language and tradition. The article explores the development of OER for this course and ends with future directions to reflect on the sustainability of the program.

Period	30 Sept 2022
Event title	Dunia Tandawazi na Mchango wa Kiswahili Conference 2022
Event type	Conference
Location	Washington, D.C., United StatesShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International