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Project Goals

The goals of the Utamaduni Online project were to develop an online course consisting of a series of 12 intermediate-advanced Swahili listening comprehension and culture lessons that address important cultural topics and themes such as health, religion, language and diaspora.

The lessons are based primarily on clips from the feature film Maangamizi – The Ancient One , directed by Ron Mulvihill and Martin Mhando and produced by GrisGris Films, as well as clips from the movie Bongoland, directed by Josiah Kibira and produced by Kibira Films. The lessons consist of clips from Maangamizi as well as other media (video clips from other movies, audio clips, pictures) and supplementary materials such as newspaper articles and interviews. The lessons provide students with guided learning activities targeting specific learning outcomes, explicit and implicit strategy instruction, graduated and contextualized help, and immediate feedback.

Learning objectives:
The lessons target advanced-level listening proficiency as defined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines. Other learning goals are for learners to:

• listen for a variety of purposes, including communicating; enhancing understanding of culture; drawing connections to other disciplines; making cultural comparisons; and coming into contact with culturally different communities (adapted from the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning);
• understand the cultural context of verbal exchanges;
• understand and appreciate discursive practices in the target language/culture;
• employ a variety of strategies, including their L1 strategies and real world knowledge, as well as L2 strategies about how to cope with new input, its ambiguity, and the complexity of its linguistic and cultural message.

Dissemination plans:
The lessons are hosted by UW-Madison and disseminated broadly to individuals and institutions across the world. Access to the lessons is password-protected, but available at no cost to adopting institutions.