Story of Drive Through ELF

Paper contents

Introduction

Illustration 1: Current classroom

Second Life is a groundbreaking and powerful mix of 3-D virtual environment, communication technologies and social networking tools. It offers its “residents” relatively simple tools to create deeply immersive 3-D virtual experiences “from the inside,” the freedom to use SL as they wish and to share it with other people from anywhere in the world. It offers casual users a convenient, relatively inexpensive and highly involving virtual experience. The interface can be intimidating for new users, depending on their level of familiarity with Information Technology (IT). It has demanding minimum requirements.

 Illustration 2: User interface

It has allowed its users to poke and/or tweet at each other since 2004.

Skype allows its user to text (IM), use voice, file exchange, video (webcam), screenshare with each other together or in small groups. It runs on most computers.

The Google docs application allows its users to create, upload, edit and share text documents, forms and spreadsheets that many users can access and edit remotely, even at the same time.

The stakeholders are teachers, students and staff.

Drive-Through ELF is an example of how an organization can use Second Life, in combination with other communication technologies not only to reduce costs but also to allow stakeholders to participate and/or contribute as freely as possible, according to their changing needs, availability, and/or preferences, on their own terms.

This article is written by the founder and owner of the school. The biggest achievement of this organization is that it has managed to attract many diverse people who have contributed their time and effort to the school and in the many ways in which they have done it, on their own initiative.

The biggest reward is having met them.

1. How Drive-Through ELF Began

While I was working for Bruno Cerboni, a pioneering Italian Second Life developer, beginning in the second half of 2006, I witnessed a spike of interest in Second Life in the Italian mass media.

The media coverage attracted a huge new generation of users. Many of them didn't know English. Something similar happened in many countries on all continents.

I decided to use this extremely powerful and relatively new communication technology (Second Life) to open an English school in Second Life because teaching English was the simplest and most appropriate business to start in SL and because production, marketing, and delivery costs (apart from labour) of this venture are close to zero.

My first language is Italian, I live in Canada now. I have studied English in three different ways: in Italy in a private school (Shenker), in high school and since 1994, in Canada, living and working.
I wanted to create a school for people who:

• are online because they want to be part of a larger or different conversation than the ones that they are part of in real life and for whom the lack of English skills is a limitation

• know and use Google, Wikipedia, online dictionaries on their own

• appreciate studying and practicing English in small classes with other students from all over the world

• can't afford to study English in a way that requires more money, time, commitment or travel

I called it "ESL SL, home of Drive-Through ESL". It is a school with a calendar of classes that students of any level could choose at their liking and decide to attend at the last minute, with classes in which they could ask the teacher any question about English and pay as little as possible.

Illustration 3: First class

The first teacher I contacted had posted an ad on Craigslist. I hired her for 8 classes, and introduced her to Second Life. I rented a store in Parioli, the SIM where all Italian newbies landed, and set the teleport from the store to one of the many classrooms that SIM owners were happy to offer in order to generate traffic. I posted the calendar of the classes in the store, and I sat there waiting for students who wanted to book a class. I created a group that was free and open to join. Members receive notices (pop-up windows) and IMs about school activities.
There was no voice option in Second Life at the time. Classes were text only and cost 500L$ (1.3 euro; 1.9US$; 215YEN). Students could pay class-by-class and attend the first time for free.
I was monitoring local chat in the square, the welcome area for Italians, and whenever I found an opening I was mentioning the school and the classes generating a lot of interest and group members.

The day of the first lesson no group member was online.  

There were avatars in the square though. The class started late, students would come and go, keep asking what was going on, teleport their friends who often had no idea where they were teleported to, and use their first language. The teacher corrected their mistakes and explained the related grammar items. The day of the second lesson none of those who came to the first class were online, but there were avatars in the square...

By May 2007, the school had a parcel of land on the mainland for the infohub, at ground level, and a classroom, in the sky above. The "mainland" is a large area of virtual real estate where it is possible to own small pieces of land and have full rights on them.

Illustration 4: Old infohub

The infohub is the place where visitors can find information about the school and the calendar of classes, or ask questions of staff (members of the "Help Team") during office hours. It's also the place where students check-in before class.

Illustration 5: Old classroom

The first infohub was minimalistic. There were 12 signs in different languages suspended around the teleport point. A friend added walls. The ruins are still visible in front of the new infohub. The classroom was a platform with couches in a semicircle. The teacher would stand at the centre. The classes were posted in SL search Events/Education. Students who read the post could teleport to the infohub with one click. There were also paid posts about the school in search/classified and one in search/places.
By that time, 5 teachers had worked at the school but they all left eventually. I had hired four of the five teachers through real life, offline contact but they left because they found keeping up with Second Life too much work for what they were paid. A fourth teacher, who seemed to be curious about Second Life, quit abruptly after spending time in SL exploring when classes weren't in session.
The fifth teacher arrived at the infohub on her own, was at ease in SL and wanted to try teaching. She did very well for the first 8 classes but the day we were supposed to create the new class schedule she told me she was leaving for a trip months long and without access to the internet. I was sitting all alone in the old infohub when Inge walked in from the land of Dr. Who which was the school's neighbour at the time. Inge had taught English for many years in many countries and had joined SL to create and develop the SL campus of the college were she was working. I told her I knew the Doctor and I promised to arrange an excursion for her on the TARDIS. She started to teach three classes a week, at the same day and time and this is how the school began in earnest.

Soon Yanto and Seikatsu joined the school's teaching staff and there were 5 lessons a week.

2. Students

Illustration 6: 3 generations

There are three generations of students.

The first students to join the school did so as part of their Second Life activities. The second generation joined Second Life to improve their English skills, discovered and joined the school and took advantage of other opportunities in Second Life to study and practice English. Finally, some students came to Second Life for the sole purpose of joining this school and have no other interest in Second Life. Whatever their interest in Second Life, students attend classes together.
Students are not required to register, join a group or provide any personal information. They can choose to receive notification(s) of classes by e-mail, SMS (text message on mobile phone), by pop-ups in Second Life and Google or Instant Messages (IMs) in Second life and Skype.

Whenever small talk is part of class activity, students are told they don't have to answer with actual personal information.

I have met many of them, some of them many times.

Some are men, some are women, some attend text-only classes.
Some work, or are looking, some study. Others are retired or have small children at home. Students log in from home, work, school, and/or internet cafes.

Some students attend other schools or take one-on-one lessons. Some come to 3 lessons a week, others to 1 class a month. Many come when they can, sometimes at hours unusual for class in their local time zone.

They come from all over the world, literally. It is common to find students from Europe, Asia, America and, more recently, Africa (North) attending the same classes while still in their respective countries.

Table of Technical Skills Required to Attend Classes

Some students struggle, occasionally or chronically, due to a slow processor or video card, insufficient RAM, insufficient screen size, unreliable or slow connection, spider-like software or viruses. There is not much we can do about these problems apart from, in some cases, offering classes in Skype.

Some students are experienced users of Second Life and Skype. They don't require assistance, some times they provide it to new students.

On the other hand, there are students who open an account in SL or Skype in order to join the school. They have no familiarity with computers in general and have no interest in acquiring it or are overwhelmed by all that they don't know.
These students usually learn just enough Second Life skills to be able to attend classes and it takes them longer to learn them.

 3. Tools Used for Communicating about the School

Illustration 7: Current infohub

Drive-Through ELF can be found in Second Life by using common keywords (ESL, English school, etc) in SL search events/education, places, or groups.

Visitors can teleport to the infohub with one click of the mouse.

It can also be found outside Second Life, using a search engine: website, pages in Xing, Linkedin, Facebook, Orkut, Renren, posts on free-advertising websites such as Craigslist, Kijiji, Zhantai, etc. and by word of mouth. Students outside SL can  contact the school's staff in their first language by e-mail or Skype.

Other Communication Technology

The blog was adopted in 2007 to post staff hours due to limitations imposed by Linden Lab on the number of postings allowed in SL Search.

The website was adopted in 2008 as a more convenient way for students to access the school calendar and to better organize static content and features that required a full page layout. It is also less likely to be blocked by censorship than blogs hosted by Google.

The website is also used to make extra class materials available to students.

The website's main feature is the school calendar in PDT (Second Life time). Students with a Google account can see the school calendar in their local time. It has a navigation bar on the top with links to general information about the school: join class (directions on how to join classes), Contact Us (list of e-mail addresses, skype address), Fees (prices and methods of payment), About the School (value proposition), Help Team. In addition, it has a sidebar on the right with links to news about the school.
Skype classes were introduced to retain students whose computer had become too outdated to run SL and to accommodate new students who had found the school but could not access SL because of their insufficient hardware, their young age (18 is the minimum age required to open an account in Second Life), or their country of residence.

Google document is used by staff for administration work, by students to access their account statement, and by visitors to the website to complete a contact form.
4. Types of Lessons (Formats)  

Illustration 8: Beginner program

The school offers several class formats (activities). Lessons are open to students of every level. Some lessons are recommended for beginners. Information about the class activity is posted on the website and sent in IMs before classes.
Text only, voice and text, music and voice, video and text. Second Life or Skype.

Beginner class for students who speak no English at all

Practical English is a short program of 8 lessons (café, airport, hotel reception, bank, hospital, garage, hair salon, home). The lessons of this program are held in rooms built to look like real-world locations, and include roleplay.

The classes that are offered each week change depending on the teachers' availability.

Text classes include: grammar, beginners, Drive-Through, story writing.

Voice classes include: grammar, beginners, reading, comprehension, pronunciation, scripted conversation, discussion.

Classes only offered in Second Life: excursion, song lyrics, film, beginner program.

All formats have been developed or adapted for SL by the teachers.

5. Staff

Teachers: They visit the school, they attend a few classes, they like what they see, they submit a class plan, they post the class on the calendar, they teach the lesson. They do a real job for a very low pay in L$. They do it because they like it. This is the kind of people they are. The school offers them flexibility in scheduling, freedom to introduce new formats, and the experience of helping students of different countries, of different levels. They inspire students to study and others to teach.

For the first two and a half years teachers had professional teaching experience in schools in the physical world.

There are now teachers whose profession is not teaching, and whose first language is not English but who nevertheless conduct classes and activities.

This article, and their insistence, gave me the confidence to introduce non-professional teachers to the school and, ultimately, to let students, through their choices, make the judgment.

Class Runner: Is the person who sends the group notices and group IMs and individual IMs to announce the lesson to group members. The Class Runner (CR) is available 30 minutes before class. His/her job is to make sure the students are prepared for class according to the class type, and to determine the student's SL skills and English level.

Some students arrive at the school on their first day in SL 5 minutes before the lesson and they attend without a problem. Others don't. The CR either assists them before and during class or directs them to a Help Team member who can assist them in their first language and invite them to a lesson that matches their hardware, SL skills and English level. The CR assists all students during the lesson using IM (rather than the general chat window) for any technical issue that might develop, so that minor glitches that students experience from time to time (crashes, lag, etc.) do not interfere with the lesson for other students.

The CR can close the lesson when, in his/her opinion, there is no more room for students, usually no more than 7 for voice classes. As the number of students increases so also do technical problems. Especially during Skype classes the connections tends to break down as the number of students increases.

Illustration 9: HT training

During lessons with first time students the teacher might use the CR as an ice-breaker.

Help Team: Help Team members are students who work for the school rather than pay for classes. They work providing customer service, technical assistance in English and in their first language. According to their skills and interests and the school's needs, they can perform other clerical tasks or special projects. Help Team members have designed the blog, website, built the infohub in Second Life and built, scripted or proposed the tools that have been adopted by the school. They translate school documents, post free advertising in their countries, and post links in their personal profiles in Second Life and other social media. During lessons they might help the Class Runner with new students in their first language.

6. About Classroom Design and Additional Teaching Tools:

Illustration 10: Sim offline

Whenever our regular classroom is unavailable because the SIM is offline we just teleport anywhere else as long as it's quiet. In Skype lessons the “classroom” is a conference call.

At first, when the school did not have its own land, we would use any of the many classrooms or amphitheaters available in SL.

When the school got its location, the classroom was a platform in the sky with couches for about 15 people. The classroom had no walls so that students could fly in or out.

Illustration 11: Dictation class

When voice was introduced we had a limit of 3 students per lesson and we would use a round table with chairs (Mystytool) that appeared any time a new student would join, to keep students and teacher close and improve sound quality.

Illustration 12: Current classroom

After the school began to charge for lessons and the number of students fell to an average of 7 for text and 4 for voice classes, teachers expressed the need for a smaller classroom. Specifically, they wanted a classroom where students would sit close enough so they could all be seen in one frame without having to continuosly adjust camera controls, but distant enough so that their names, which appear above their heads, would not overlap. Seikatsu built the first one. One advantage of having a classroom that looks like a classroom is that first time students don't mistake the lesson for a discussion.

Other teachers built their own version. The version we use now, built by Inge, is simple to use for students and built using few prims (Prims are the basic construction elements in SL. Their number is limited for any given piece of land).

There are walls so that students don't fall down, but they're transparent.

Teaching Tools:

Teachers don't know who will attend class until the last moment. Students can ask any question at any time.
Text chat, voice and notecards are already powerful tools. Students already use the browser during class for definitions and pictures

In this context teaching tools are not used regularly.

Conclusion:
There is no conclusion, this is just the beginning.

The information in the "Notes" section below was copied from the "About the School" page of the website.

It's another kind of description of the school. It has been written for a reader who is looking for English lessons online. It's the value proposition of the school. It took me a long time to find the words for it. I found them thanks to the teachings, opinions, suggestions, advice from teachers, staff and students, and by reading "Europe’s three language problems" by Philippe van Parijs

http://www.drive-through-esl.info/school.html

The organization of the school keeps changing in every aspect: students, staff, formats, schedule, technologies. Every aspect influences the others. Change is largely determined by stakeholders' needs, input, feedback; by the evolution of the technologies used and by the adoption of new ones.

By the time you read this something else will have changed.
NOTES:

ABOUT THIS SCHOOL
DRIVE- THROUGH ELF (English as a Lingua Franca)
Drive-through
A drive-through, or drive-thru, is a type of service provided by a business that allows customers to purchase products without leaving their cars. The format was first pioneered in the United States in the 1940s but has since spread to other countries.
Lingua Franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues, often a basic form of speech with simplified grammar.
Lingua franca is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic history or structure of the language.
Lingua franca may also refer to the de facto language within a more or less specialized field.
DRIVE-THROUGH ELF (English as a lingua Franca)
When you want, when you can, when you need.
DRIVE-THROUGH ELF n.
1.A school where students can come to lessons from their homes, offices, internet cafes or from wherever a computer and an internet connection is available, using free software, without need to register or reserve in advance.
2.An English lesson where students can improve their ability to communicate in English; can ask any question about English.
Can you live without the internet? Yes you can.
Can you live without a computer? Yes you can.
But you're not.
Same for the English language.
Are you active? Do you exercise, practice any sport, go to the gym to improve your general health and well being? You should.
Same for the English language.
How did you learn to speak in your native language? How did you learn to write? How do you learn new words?
Think about it.
Same for the English language
And what about computers, the internet. It's all about information, aren't you learning something every moment?
Same for the English language.
At DRIVE-THROUGH ELF the first class is free, so you can try. You can contact us in your first language.
We'd like to hear from you.
ABOUT OUR CLASSES
There are many class activities: reading, pronunciation, description, discussion, grammar, Business English, classes for absolute beginners. And remember, you can ask questions at anytime during class. You can learn from other people's questions and from the teacher's answers.
Classes can be taken as needed.
Don't be afraid your question is too difficult, or that other students will not understand. The teacher will answer for everybody. Don't be afraid to ask a question just because you're worried it might not be correct English. That's the reason you're here! Ask your question anyway. The teacher will understand, and by correcting your question, the whole class learns something.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Visit the class calendar, click on the classes to read a description and chose the classes you want.
If you want you can receive reminders before the lesson you want to attend class in your e-mail or on your mobile phone.
To come to class, once you have the software installed, simply log in 10 minutes before class.
There is no need to subscribe. The first class is free. Then you can pay lesson by lesson or buy packages for more classes and spend even less.
Follow the instructions in the “Join us” section or contact one of the Help Team members who speaks your language or visit them during their office hours.

Bibliography/References

• VAN PARIJS, Philippe "Europe’s three language problems" Prepared for Multilingualism in Law and Politics, R. Bellamy, D. Castiglione & C. Longman eds., Oxford: Hart. Available in: http://www4.soc.unitn.it:8080/poloeuropeo/content/e64/e385/e398/vanparijs.europethreelanguageproblems_ita.pdf

• GLADWELL, Malcom (15, december 2008) "Most Likely to Succeed. How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?" Annals of Education. The New Yorker. Available in: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true

Acknowledgement – Noncomercial (cc-by-nc 3.0 or any other later)