Overview:
I worked as a VILT instructor for a large corporation in Osaka, Japan. I lived and worked professionally in Asia for almost five years. Working in Osaka, I gained experience training adult learners and professionals online, at a distance, in a real-time virtual environment (VILT). As a VILT ESL instructor, I was able to implement and test e-learning technologies for improved learner performance.

NOVA's Virtual Instructional Lead Training System

User Group: There was one primary user group and one secondary user group. The primary group were adult professionals working all over Japan. Knowing how to speak English was important for many when more and more they were in need of global communication on the job. Some examples of the ESL learners professions: Lawyers, doctors, salarymen, professors, nurses, business owners, college students, and more. Using the "Ginganet" video conferencing system, we offered ESL conversation courses 24 hours a day, and were able to reach students in their offices, businesses, and homes. The secondaray user group were the online instructors themselves. The instructors had whiteboards, photo and sound databases, and were able to utilize these software tools in order to enhance and add to the learning of the ESL lessons offered.

Japanese Professionals as ESL students

User Testing:
"The usability test will tell you whether your audience can use what you've made. It helps identify problems people have with your site and reveals difficult interfaces and confusing language. Normally, usability tests are done as part of a larger research series and involve preparation and analysis." (Observing the User Experience, Kuniavsky, p. 9)

Although I wasn't given the task of formally usability testing my audience with the equipment we were asked to use, I was able to study and test how ESL users reacted to the various software tools I used in an instructional setting. I was a VILT instructor over a four year period, and I used this equipment 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to provide instruction to my audiences over a great distance (various parts of Japan.)

Many students were a bit intimidated at first to use the technology for an ESL course. They had gotten used to live instruction in a classroom, but were concerned with having the same lesson in front of a TV and camera. Would the learning be as effective? Would it be less effective? Often, this was a concern of many ESL students.

Pros and Cons:
Over time, however, students and instructors alike adapted to the change. There were a number of advantages and disadvantages to using this virtual instructor lead system.

Advantages: For instance, it was a great advantage in that native speaking ESL instructors were able to reach a wide audience of learners in Japan far and wide. The software tools, although very basic, allowed instructors to constantly pull visual and audio examples into their lessons. For example, if a student couldn't understand the word "car", an instructor could simply pull up a photo of a car instantly. The whiteboard was a wacom tablet in which instructors could draw examples, write out sentences or words, and even play games or do language exercises with the students.

wacom whiteboard/tablet

Disadvantages: One large disadvantage for teaching language and communication over a VILT system was teaching body language that is used in a culture or internationally. It is very difficult to teach hand gestures as well. Hand gestures could be used during a class, but it was most unnatural. For instance, an instructor or student might point up or down in front of a the camera to gesture to another student (the computer screen looked like a box with four talking heads) instead of point forward or straight onwards towards someone as in a real live situation. There was no bowing, no shaking hands, and even nodding "yes" or shaking one's head "no" had less of an effect in an online coversation. Being able to see a person's lips clearly when they talk can also aide an ESL learner when they are learing pronunciation of various words--this was also lost through the medium of the camera vs. speaking in person.

Although the whiteboard and photo library had some great advantages, an instuctor would be forced to toggle between his/her own image being projected to the students and the photo or whiteboard being shown. This created a great disconnect between students when they were trying to communicate with their instructor.