Case Study: e-Learning Website Application Development

English For All
Division of the Los Angeles Unified School District

Client Profile

The Los Angeles Unified School District oversees the development and administration of the Los Angeles K-12 public school system, and also provides continuing and career education for adults. The Division of Adult and Career Education is a branch of LAUSD and houses the largest adult school population in the country. In addition to overseeing all activity for these institutions, LAUSD also produces more English as a Second Language educational material than any other organization, public or private, in the United States. From workbooks to audiotapes, multi-part video series to CD-ROMs, the district knows ESL better than anyone.

Challenge

• To develop a student-centric, self-paced learning system incorporating audio and video to enhance not only the user experience but the learning experience overall.

Technology

Front-end Technology

• Apple Quick Time
• Macromedia Flash
• Macromedia Shockwave
• MP3 Audio

Middle-ware Technology

• ASP
• Database: Microsoft SQLServer
• Java
• Visual Basic

Back-end Technology

• Apple Quick Time Streaming Server
• Application Server: Microsoft Internet Information Server
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000, Macintosh OSX

Solution

Pioneers in English as Second Language instructional services, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Sacramento County Office of Education, the Adult Literacy Media Alliance, and Aguirre International formed a joint partnership called CyberSTEP (System Technology Educational Products) to further the technological advancements in adult education development, analysis, and instruction. The federally funded alliance works to overcome the obstacles of implementing state-of-the-art technology for ESL course instruction.

Though the partners involved in this venture often collaborate in the evaluation and development process, each partner takes primary responsibility for projects falling under its classification of expertise. As the nation's largest developer of ESL course instruction material, LAUSD was selected by CyberSTEP to design and produce a multimedia learning system for ESL students.

The system is comprised of a series of courses available in a variety of mediums including a video series, printed courseware, a CD-ROM component, and a web presence. As the focus of ESL instruction is language and literacy proficiency rather than general educational needs, LAUSD’s Division of Adult and Career Education wrote and produced English for All, a series designed to educate ESL students who lack the basic literacy skills needed to function effectively in the United States. The program features a series of twenty fifteen-minute videos that cover topics ranging from finding an apartment, to vocational and work- related issues, to accessing public services such as libraries and public transportation. Upon completion of the videos, written materials were created including transcripts of the videos, activities and tests.

LAUSD's target audiences are non- or limited English speaking low-income adults as well as ESL instructors and institutions who generally have limited resources and time to spend on education. These organizations continually pursue alternative cost-effective programs to facilitate the learning process but are also flexible enough to be used by independent students or in a traditional classroom environment. Keeping this in mind, LAUSD looked to Azavar™ Technologies to design and develop an online version of the EFA program, giving learners the ability to use the program anywhere and anytime at no educational cost to the students.

Working hand in hand with the program director, Azavar's designers and programmers set up the parameters for successful implementation of the online program. It was imperative that the system be intuitive, as many of its users would be new to computers. It was also mandatory that the system was accessible from low bandwidth connections and offered technical support in multiple languages.

Azavar's challenge was to define what was achievable in the given timeframe while recognizing that the solution had to be cost-effective. To meet LAUSD's cost-control concerns, our strategy consultants concluded that the first iteration of EFA should offer support in Spanish only with future iterations offering support in five or more languages. The decision to first implement the series in Spanish was based on a demographic study performed by the Department of Education's Information & Assessment Branch. The study reports that Hispanic students account for 70.8 percent of all enrollment for LAUSD ESL courses.

Interface architects at Azavar designed the website with large graphical navigation and icons to ensure ease of use for ESL students. The goal was to provide users with an intuitive sense of navigation, yet remain appealing so as to continually engage them throughout the entire site. Taking into account that the typical ESL student might not have access to the latest in computer software and technology, the site allows users to view the program at anytime and from any computer. Special code was developed to detect the user connection speed; users falling below the requirement were directed to a text version of the video series and users with high-bandwidth connections could view high quality QuickTime video.

The website's main theme centers on a dynamic database of questions for activities and tests. With any ESL program, it is essential that the questions and answers be randomized to prevent students from memorizing the response pattern. Azavar's online implementation of the EFA series features randomly generated audio clips and graphic course instruction to provide students with a genuine learning experience that does not produce a conditioned response pattern.

Evaluation and assessment are also imperative to ESL programs. Course instructors must have the ability to evaluate, analyze and instantly access a student's performance in order to improve learner outcomes for future ESL programs. To meet this requirement, Azavar configured the series so that students who score less than 80 percent are required to redo the activity or test until a satisfactory score is achieved. At the end of each test, students are shown the questions they answered incorrectly as well as the correct answer.

For both teachers and students, progress is monitored from the MyEFA section. Here, students can see what activities and tests they have completed successfully, those attempted but not completed and those yet to be completed. This page also allows navigation to any section of the course. Teachers can view class information and drill down into individual student progress for instant evaluation.

Communication between teachers and students is imperative to the learning process. Azavar provided a common "tools" area on the site to ensure that instructors can provide feedback, delegate course work and offer help to students using the online series. The "tools" section consists of private mail between teachers and students, a message board for community support and a pop-up language translator.

These components resulted in a well-received system endorsed by LAUSD, the California Department of Education as well as the United States Government. Azavar's proven database skills combined with cutting-edge multimedia technology produced an engaging and pedagogically sound learning tool, empowering students worldwide with an enhanced educational resource for free.

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