Break Language Barriers in Workplace Training in Moodle

Jia Zhuang 6/19/19 11:33am

Background story…

Before I started my current job (Instructional Designer), all I can think about language barriers existence is in the classroom for students. Oh no, you know what, actually I did ran across language barrier in workplace once upon a time.

It was about two years ago, I went to the Human Resource Office to hand in some paperwork (I was still a student at that time). The Office has couple reception desks, different people are handling different stuff, mostly is new employees on campus. When I almost done with my paperwork, I heard two people were kind of talking loud over the reception desk beside me. So, yeah, I overheard that they were kind of having a difficulty to communicate, the lady kept asking: Can you speak English? What language do you prefer? And the guy about 60 years old was having a hard time to express himself. The guy is an Asian, I mean, at least looks like.

As you all maybe curious, yes, I am an Asian, too. So at that point, my paperwork is finished. So I step forwarded to ask the lady is there anything I can help? And the lady said: Yes, please, we tried to contact the Chinese translator and the translator is not here yet. Do you speak Chinese? He is not that good in English. He needs to finish all his life insurance paperwork today.

After hearing that I was speaking inside myself like: I’m not that good in English, too. Haha. Finger crossed.

Then I said: I do speak Chinese. And I will ask him that whether it’s okay that I help him with translating all the forms.

So I talked to the guy, he does speak Chinese, also he speaks Vietnamese and Cantonese and a little bit of English. He tried to work in Dinning Hall as a janitor I guess. Usually his daughter (who speaks English fluently) helped him with his paperwork, but this time his daughter is not available. So he kind of having hard time with filling out all the insurance forms.

Well, I guess I be a little help with that. Because I filled out same type of forms before and I can speak Chinese and English.

So I helped him go through all the forms, translated their questions to each other. After that, I got thank you very much from the guy and the lady’s: Maybe you should change your major to translation! Haha.

When I look back…

At that time, I was just happy that I could be a little help for someone who needs help. Well now, when I look back to that time, with my current job in Human Resource field, I kind of feel that people with multiple language needs are kind of excluded. Yes, I don’t mean professional staff or faculty or student, I mean staff who does work that doesn’t require fluency in English like a janitor. They don’t need to get the job with an English level certificate or a specific score in an English test.

For something important like life insurance forms, statements requiring signatures, they don’t have help language support, well maybe they have, but like the Chinese translator who was “on his/her way”, he/she still haven’t got there after we were done all the paperwork. Support like this “manual” does have limitations: space, time and short supply.

Human Resource or any supervisors, how are you going to deal with that?

Challenges come out…

The day before yesterday, my boss mentioned that she and the head of other department are trying to find some solutions to break language barriers in one of our specific employee required training: Anti-Bullying.

This training has two versions: in-person training and online Moodle training. Here we are talking about breaking the language barrier in workplace training in Moodle.

We don’t worry about our other online training for supervisors and managers, because positions like these do required your fluency in English, so it does not really matter to have multiple language support (if you have any other thoughts about this one, please let me know).

But Anti-Bullying training is a required workshop for all new employees on campus. A lot of people who does not have a bilingual (one is English) background needs to take this workshop, too. And on campus, we have a lot of people with different language needs like: Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin(Chinese), Cantonese, Spanish……

Possible solutions that impossible…

Translator Office Service:

Maybe you‘ll say: why don’t we just take advantage of Translate Office on campus. Wow, good point, but there are two things we need to consider:

Budget

The service is not free. You need to pay for it, and I suppose it’s not that cheap. And second: maybe you just have one employee who needs Vietnamese version, are you going to pay for the only one?

Unpredicted Needs

Maybe you can translate your stuff into all the languages that are in needs now, well how about in the future we will have more people who are in needs of more languages?

Plug-in Translator:

Or maybe you’ll say: some of our web pages just have Google plug-in translator, people can use that to translate the whole web page. Here comes the problems:

Plug-in Translator Not Allowed

We are not allowed to add plug-in translator on our official web page anymore, also Google seems doesn’t have the plug-in translator anymore. Touché…

Copy & Paste Google Translation:

Then, how about learners just copy & paste the learning content in Google translation to translate into the language they need? Question:

Stuff can’t be copy & pasted

How do they translate the whole Moodle webpage? How do they copy & paste an interactive Quiz?

Too much work

Low technology background learners are excluded

Possible solutions that possible…

Create a eBook version for Moodle course

Transfer learning content in the Moodle course to an eBook version. Then learners are able to use google translate or any plug-in translator they’d like to use to translate the eBook.

Also, talking about learning style, someone prefers more self-paced, high technology like taking Moodle course, someone prefers more traditional class way: in person course, I’m thinking there are also people who are shy to take in person course because they are afraid their English is not good enough? Also they don’t feel that comfortable with technology like an online course in Moodle.

Benefits:

They can translate it using online tools.
They don’t need to figure out how to use Moodle before they are able to take the online course.
They can print it out if they want, then they can review it on the bus, at their workplace…whatever they like.
Less cost than actually have a printed book, also can be preserved much more easily.

Drawbacks:

We are unable to track their learning progress like completion tracking do in Moodle.
We are unable to assess their learning results like what Quiz do in Moodle.

Possible solutions for drawbacks:

While taking about the drawbacks, maybe we can limit the type of learners who can use eBook instead of taking online courses or in-person courses. Learners need to fill out a request form to state why they prefer an eBook self-training instead of an in-person/Moodle course one.

Accepted excuse can be:

Low technology background
Uncomfortable with technology
Low bilingual (one is English) background
Rare needs to speak English while working

Create videos to replace long plain text demonstrations

Use more visuals like videos, graphics or icons than just plain text to help learners with multiple language needs to understand our learning contents.

“When training staff members who don’t speak English, try to communicate more visually than verbally. Use pictures, videos, and/or physical demonstrations to teach them …

One industry that communicates very well, for example, is the airlines, whose flight attendants give safety instructions to passengers before a plane takes off. If you’ve seen this, you probably remember their hand gestures.

A common method in our industry is color coding. You can use colors on equipment, signs, and bottles or containers of cleaning supplies or chemicals to show danger (red), a lesser degree of hazard (yellow), caution (orange), and safe/good to go (green).”

[Erica.R Tips for Training Employees with a Language Barrier CleanTelligent May 17.2018]

Benefits:

Provide multiple ways of demonstration to meet multiple needs/multiple learning style, such as vision (video), reading (closed captions), hearing (narrations).

Also YouTube provides multiple language auto-translate, I’ve tried the Chinese one, at least I can say: pretty much is accurate.

More interesting and engaging, less overwhelming to learners than reading too much text.

Less budget cost than using translator office (just a guess, I don’t know how much it costs).

New Functions in Moodle

Staring from July 11th, new function in Moodle will provide more interactive assessment possibilities. ( On our campus)

Without talking about everything, the first thing comes to my mind is that we can use other ways to demonstrate scenarios assessment for learners.

With H5P interactive video function (to read more about this function, click here), we can demonstrate workplace scenarios by visual: video/animation. And embed several questions in the video.

Because the video needs to be a YouTube video, so we can use auto-translate function here again.

Also video Quiz can attract learners to take, possibly leave more impressed memory in their mind.

Drawbacks:

We can’t assess their learning results, we can’t track that whether they attempted the video Quiz or not.

Well here it comes again: multiple choice question is like a guess game, learners can just re-attempt until they get the right answer then get passed. So guess game is better or un-assessed/un-tracked interactive Quiz is worse? I can’t really tell.