Personnel – Jason Looper

Corporate soft-skills training – efl/esl

Personnel Issues

An e-learning module for EFL/ESL students that offers self-paced practice for improved interpersonal skills in English during business situations

Personnel Issues

self-paced, e-learning for corporate EFL students

Client

Intergroup

Role

Project initiation
Objectives preparation
Survey design
User Interviews
Low-fidelity rapid prototyping
High-fidelity prototyping
Usability testing & Validation
Presentation
Evaluation

xAPI statement writing

Design Tools

Noteworthy
Illustrator
PowerPoint
Articulate 360

The Challenge

A language school in Japan specializing in simultaneous translation and corporate language training required a series of short, self-directed learning modules targeting various interpersonal skills for its corporate clients moving to overseas posts. As lead designer and SME, I developed an e-learning project that used simulations and learning interactions to drive English fluency in business situations where teamwork and collaboration are of great consequence.

Although the organization’s primary mode of delivering learning material is instructor-led training (ILT), students had little opportunity to practice outside of the classroom; thus were unable to reach language proficiency targets. This resulted in clients’ being unable to justify further investment in English training–directly affecting the language school’s bottom line.

The assumption was that offering learners mobile, “anytime, anywhere”, self-directed practice, would supplement the instructor-led training; improving the overall transfer of new knowledge and behaviors.

Objective: given common corporate teamwork scenarios, students make critical decisions about a workplace problem.

Input/output modes will challenge users’ reading, listening, vocabulary, and grammar skills.
Each challenge must be completed with 100% accuracy in order to advance.

Problem solving and decision-making scenarios help students draw more precise connections.

Once students leave the classroom, there’s little opportunity for meaningful English practice.

User Profile

All students were Japanese, mid-career business people with intermediate to early upper intermediate English proficiency, as determined by pre-testing based on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) standard, as well as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Interschool primarily offers short-term (3~6 week) contracts to its corporate clients whose employees (students) take once or twice weekly ILT sessions of 90 minutes.

Design

The key to a successful design was to ensure the modules were responsive to various screen sizes and would work seamlessly on a variety of browsers. In addition, they had to be compliant with local accessibility requirements. These include font size options, audio captions, and an option to convert the course’s primary language from English to Japanese.

Furthermore, to efficiently track students’ progress, I proposed, selected, installed and administered the organizations first LMS (Moodle). While building the e-learning, I remained aware of which user data was essential and required tracking. Finally, I made the right adjustments to output xAPI and SCORM compliant data to ease the ongoing administration of the LMS.

How do we efficiently track the users’ progress?

Due to my no longer being employed by the company and proprietary rights issues, I cannot provide access to the full project. Instead, a video of a formative iteration is on loop below.

Takeaways

Overall, the e-learning represented a solid ROI for the organization. After the project was fully implemented, the data showed client retention rates had reached their highest-ever levels. There was also data demonstrating that the addition of the e-learning, coupled with a PR campaign to promote them, drove a wave of new student enrollments that lasted for several quarters.

Beyond the financial windfall, the offerings also helped the organization differentiate itself from rivals in Japan’s crowded English language training market. At the time, competitors had yet to develop mobile e-learning.