Dakota Online Learning Platform

Dakhota Online Learning Platform is a continued language revitalization initiative that takes a novel approach to language revitalization combining several transmission-boosting practices that have been previously successful, with the ultimate aim of spreading the Dakhota language beyond classroom walls, making it meaningful, useful, and accessible to Dakhota people in their daily lives at home. The online portal will provide self-guided lessons, quizzes, and grading mechanisms, allowing language learners to learn at their own pace, as well as a synchronous learning component, where teachers can provide live lessons that are flexibly scheduled according to the time they have and the learners at each level. There will also be a teacher training component, training teachers to create and implement similarly effective and pedagogically-sound curricula based on their particular community's needs, creating an 5 Dakhota Iapi Okhodakichiye ever-growing repository of reusable, online materials to be used by educators of the language. The courses on the platform will be accredited for high-school and college students, building on the existing accreditation of DIO's curriculum by Concordia College of Moorhead, MN. Additionally, the platform will allow public high school and middle school students to earn Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) credits, preparing them for their college experience. The online platform will be coordinated by experienced language teachers, immersion teacher trainers, and in consultation with our Elders. It will likely be accessed by speakers of Lakota and Nakoda dialects as well, because of its low barriers and effective pedagogy, and they will then be able to adapt their learning to their community's dialects through conversations with local teachers and elders. Ultimately, the development of the Dakhota Online Learning Platform will guide all learners to fluency in the Dakhota dialect of the Siouan languages.