Hiro (Justin) Ota is Assistant Professor in the department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He received his Ph. D. in Linguistics from UH Manoa. He also taught Japanese at Kapiolani Community College in Honolulu, International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan, and Beloit College in Wisconsin. Courses he has taught include first to third-year Japanese, JPN 307 - Writing and Reading Japanese for bilingual speakers, JPN332 - Web-based Advanced Japanese Reading and Writing and JPN421 - Japanese Composition. Professor Ota's research interests include integration of technology in the teaching of East Asian languages, orthographic issues associated with Chinese characters, and Japanese syntax. He received the 2001-2002 LLL Instructor Award for Innovative Teaching with Ms. Claire Hitosugi for their project entitled "Development of a Web-based Reading and Writing Japanese Course."

Claire Ikumi Hitosugi is a native of Japan and Instructor in Japanese at the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Ms. Hitosugi holds an MA in ESL and an MBA from the University of Hawaii. She has been teaching Japanese for 16 years and has taught various courses from lower to upper-level Japanese courses. Ms. Hitosugi has been incorporating technology in her teaching for the last ten years and has engaged in collaborative cyber projects with Haverford University, Vanderbilt University and Chubu University in Japan. She has also been introducing extensive reading to Japanese students. Ms. Hitosugi is pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication and Information Sciences. Her current research interest is on the impact of technology on society.