Teaching Challenges

Question:
If you could make 1 or 2 suggestions to support/assist a new faculty member who has never worked with deaf students, what would they be?

Click on the speaker images below to see video of the teacher's comments.

Laura Dwyer
Senior Lecturer - SCB

I would make sure that first of all you know that names of the students in your classroom. I recommend you know the names of every student in your classroom, but you got to know the names of your deaf and hard of hearing students so that you can make a personal connection with those students. Also, make sure you know the names of the support people, the interpreters in the classroom; you want to connect with them and talk to them as you go through the semester and make sure that if they have questions they are bringing them forward to you. You don't want the students to be talking to the lecturers about issues and then not have it come to you as an instructor. Then the third thing I'd make sure that you know is who the tutor is for your classroom and connect to them as well and keep in touch with that individual.

Sandra Connelly
Instructional Professor - COS

Ask for feedback from the students what is working, what isn't working, what they like, what don't they like? I often in my class every three or for weeks they get a half sheet of paper that says, what's your favorite thing about the class? What's your least favorite thing about the class? What's working, what's not? And we can make changes there's nothing in my syllabus that says I'm going to lecture the same on day one that I lecture the same on day 41, there's nothing that tells me that. So how do we get it so that it is a comfortable learning environment? And that it works for the majority of people, you're never going to get everybody there's always going to be something that doesn't work for somebody and they don't like it and they want you to go back to what you were doing before, but you have to kind of balance that with the time investment and it's a cost benefit analysis really. How much are you putting in versus how much is that benefiting the students? First is how much is it making things easier and more accessible for you as well as an instructor.

Patricia Iglesias
Associate Professor - COE

I think one of my recommendations would be collaborate with NTID faculty in the support area, I know that many faculty don't know and new faculty don't know that we do have NTID support faculty to help us. So collaborating with them and give them access to my courses if you are using my courses and let them know the course's structure, how many exams, home works will help them to help the student at the end and that is what we want. In my case I use my courses I think it is a good tool and anything that I do in class I post it in advance on my courses, so if I have a PowerPoint presentation that I use often in my classes, I post them one week in advance because I know some of the deaf students will print them and take notes on the PowerPoint presentation and that's good not only for the deaf, but I know that some hearing students will do that too and that would be another good recommendation.

Philip Gelsomino II
Visiting Lecturer - SCB

What I do that I find very helpful is I look at the deaf or hard of hearing students to see whether they are looking up, looking down, or where they're looking and I also look at the interpreters, because the interpreters are watching the students so if the students aren't watching the interpreters they generally stop signing, because they know the student's not looking at them and that's normally my queue to repeat so I am very aware of everyone in the room; hearing, hard of hearing, makes no difference if they're not focused and paying attention I think I'd say to new faculty be aware of what's going on in the classroom, who's paying attention, who's not and specifically what I do is I repeat. So my advice is to pay attention to what's going on in the room and adjust to that.

Scott Franklin
Physics Professor - COS

I think the most important thing and this is true with many students, is with deaf students each one is an individual and getting to know them and their particular preferences for communication and for working style. That is probably the most important thing. So taking the time to recognize them and get to know them, do they prefer to interact via email, do they prefer to interact in class beforehand through an interpreter or through transcription. Getting to know them as an individual allows you or enables all of the communication to happen after that so that's the most important thing.

Gina Ferrari
Senior Lecturer - CIAS

The classroom, you know you have students from diverse backgrounds that bring their own personal histories and experiences and deaf culture becomes a part of that and becomes of sort of, it becomes a part of layered nuances of the classroom. So, to realize that and to learn about deaf culture and its rich history and the multi-layers that exist within that culture.

Sharon Mason
Professor - GOL

The first suggestion I would make to any faculty who have deaf students in their classes is to make full use of the interpreters that are available to them and the support staff that are available to them. And make it an exchange of ideas and ask for feedback, particularly from the interpreters as to how things are going in the classroom and how your instruction is. Whether you’re talking too fast, too slow, using too many hand gestures, using words that are not definitive enough for the students to understand. In the College of Computing in particular we use a lot of acronyms. So communicating with the interpreters about how to represent those acronyms can be very useful.

Christine Kray
Professor - COLA

Whatever you do to enhance access for the deaf students will also benefit the hearing students. Here’s one way that I handle presentations that I think enhances the experience for both the deaf and the hearing students. So we use mycourses a lot and I will require that the students, deaf and hearing students post the text of their presentation to a discussion area in mycourses 24 hours in advance and I explain that this gives the interpreters and the captionists the opportunity to review the materials so that the interpreters are all ready to voice that presentation, the captionists as well, they’re all ready to voice that presentation in advance, alright, so it makes for a stronger, more coherent presentation.

Question:
What considerations do you make when you want to divide the class into groups to work on an outside project?  Is your approach different when the groups are working together during the class time?

Click on the speaker images below to see video of the teacher's comments.

Philip Gelsomino II
Visiting Lecturer - SCB

I don't assign groups, I let everyone decide who they want to work with. I treat everyone the same. It doesn't make any difference to me if there's someone who has a disability service agreement, somebody is hard of hearing, you work with whoever you want to work with, we all work together. So I don't do anything special, I say work with anybody and everybody you want because you're going to have to do that in the professional world. You don't get to pick who you're working with so you figure it out.

Laura Dwyer
Senior Lecturer - SCB

I do not make considerations of whether a student is deaf or a hearing student I divide the classroom randomly every time. If I have a number of deaf students in the class and I don't have enough interpreting resources I might take a second look at that and ask the deaf students if they're interesting in being together on a team or I might go to the NTID support folks and ask them if I can have an additional resource for the classroom for a team project whatever. But I do not usually make allowances for deaf versus hearing students in team make up.

Scott Franklin
Physics Professor - COS

It depends a lot on is this the first time they've been grouped together, or where we are in the semester or what is the content of. So we initially very often if there are multiple deaf students, early in the semester you may want to group them together to allow them the comfort and the communication, the ability to communicate effortlessly with at least one other member in their group. And then over time I think you can branch out and mix and match groups a little more in more diverse ways.

Sandra Connelly
Instructional Professor - COS

We chose to kind of let it flow naturally and where the students sit and group together is great, if they don't like their seat in the first week they are free to move wherever they would like in the room until they find a comfortable spot. Some of our deaf and hard of hearing students choose to work together, they want to be able to sign, they want to be able to communicate quickly with each other, and not feel like they are missing out on side conversations that often occur with the hearing students. But we also have a large number of them anymore that are coming in without any signing skills so actually working with a hearing group they are much more adapt to that, they're thinking about using an interpreter or writing or finding a different way to communicate in those groups so we encourage them to sit where they're comfortable.

Question:
If a deaf student comes to your office hours to clarify a problem that was reviewed in class, how do you work with that student?

Click on the speaker images below to see video of the teacher's comments.

Scott Franklin
Physics Professor - COS

So probably about 15 years ago I was working with Harry Lang, he was a deaf education instructor over at NTID and he was deaf as well and I went to his office because we were writing a grant together and the question was how were we going to communicate and so we took one keyboard that was connected to his computer and we opened up word and when he wanted to talk he would type and when he was done he would give me the keyboard so I couldn't type or if I wanted to interrupt I had to get his attention and physically take the keyboard back and afterwards he said that that was the richest, most productive, most equitable conversation he had ever had with a hearing colleague and so I do that. I force students to do that, sometimes I've done it where I take two keyboards but they're connected to the same computer so if two people type at the same time you get a mish mash of garbled letters. And that I have found to be an enormously productive way of communicating, even better than texting because it is asynchronous, I think asynchronous right. So where as texting I might read your text as it is happening and be responding while you're already still composing the next part of the text and so we're talking over or past each other. What this does whether its one keyboard or multiple keyboards is I can't talk while you're talking and I have to sit and wait and think about what I want to say but we can't talk at the same time and that's been incredibly powerful.

Patricia Iglesias
Associate Professor - COE

Well communication for me was never a problem, I know sign language now, but before knowing sign language it was never a problem. So it is true that it is engineering courses so most of the time we do paper back and forth with hearing and deaf students so with both. So the students know that you are there to help them, so you are willing to help so communication will never be a problem. I know that some student are using you know some apps and I know that in my department with the academic advisors sometimes they have two screens to communicate with deaf students, but in my case when it is one on one I don't have any problem with paper back and forth and that's it.

Philip Gelsomino II
Visiting Lecturer - SCB

I always leave it up to the student is to what they're most comfortable with. I say if you want an interpreter present schedule an interpreter, if you feel comfortable that you can read my lips or are or are emotional responses or actions or gestures are able to work we'll do a little of that if you can write down and we can communicate in writing as well as nonverbal and verbal queues we do it. It works. It depends on the student really its whatever they feel comfortable with we make work.

Sharon Mason
Professor - GOL

One of the things I really like for students to do since we have a lot of lab based courses is to try and use that lab time, a lot of time we have a few minutes at the beginning or at the end that is flexible and I can work with a student then, because there’s almost always an interpreter available then. But if a student does need to come to my office during office hours or other hours, and there is no interpreter available, I will be sure to do as much as I can on the white board. I try to specifically avoid “yes” and “no” questions, to pose open ended questions to the students, so that I can be sure when they answer those questions that I’m hearing the level of detail that I’m expecting them to have in order to be fully grasping the material. And then I will use my keyboard, a lot, share my keyboard with the student, by just bringing up a text document and typing in answers. And allowing them to type in questions and answers and that seems faster than sometimes writing it on the board or on paper. And then I can just print it and hand it to the student and that seems to work well.

Question:
What strategies do you use in class to insure the Deaf and hard of hearing students are fully engaged and able to participate?

Click on the speaker images below to see video of the teacher's comments.

Patricia Iglesias
Associate Professor - COE

So I think one important thing, and that's one important thing that Bradley you know reminded me of today, is take some time between you know when I am explaining something give them some time to think about it. And also when I'm asking a question give them time to answer, sometimes I'm too energetic so I'm asking the question and I'm responding to the question myself. So it is good to just have some time to let them think, not only deaf but also hearing and they will have the time to understand the question and then answer. So I think take the time to let them think is important.

Philip Gelsomino II
Visiting Lecturer - SCB

I treat them like everyone else, and I ask them questions and wait for answers and they participate. So the types of courses I teach I'm heavy discussion it's not just lecture and you sit there and listen what I like to do is validate that you're understanding what we're talking about. So when a student asks a question of me I always say ask your classmates I don't care who's asking the question and then they have to turn, which is totally taking them out of their comfort zone, hearing or hard of hearing it makes no difference and they have to ask the question and then they have to communicate with each other. If it needs me to step in I step in, but otherwise I keep everybody participating so if I know somebody's not paying attention I ask them and I wait for an answer and if they don't know the answer I don't beat them up I just say ok here's the answer ask the class they'll give you the answer and we'll move on.

Scott Franklin
Physics Professor - COS

We encourage active listening and we spend some time talking about what that looks like, what it means, we revisit it throughout the semester so the idea that we have to pay attention to what our group members are saying and how they are sitting and how they are participating and that's the responsibility for group participation is on the entire group so if you see someone who is not participating it is your responsibility to ask the question to bring that person in. And then we have some reflective activities where we say how well did this work and what was your key contribution, was there someone in this group that you either brought in and how did you do that or did someone bring you in and how did they do that?

Gina Ferrari
Senior Lecturer - CIAS

I teach 2D design and it's a studio course so within the studio course there's lecture but there is a lot of group activity, communication, exchange of information in between students and it's important that all students participate and be part of the conversation. And I think it's important for students to become comfortable with each other, learn each other's names, know each other, know a little about everybody's history and experiences so creating a relaxed environment, an environment where, an environment that's inclusive where everybody feels comfortable in participating.

Laura Dwyer
Senior Lecturer - SCB

So this is a pretty timely question for me because I'm teaching a marketing analytics class right now and I have two deaf students in the class and both of them frankly are struggling because of all the math in the class and the interpreters are having a hard time keeping up with the class lecture and helping the students stay on track in the classroom because it moves pretty quickly. So we've used a couple of tools so I print out the slides for the deaf students ahead of class time, they told me that that would be helpful to them if they had the notes ahead of time, on paper so they could write that out. During the exercise in class I always travel over to that part of the classroom and touch base, how are we doing here, do you need extra help? I talk to the interpreters about making sure that you know they understand what is going on. Often time deaf students tend to work by themselves and I'm always aware of, like I'll say find a couple of people to work with right during a class exercise and often times I'll see them kind of by themselves sort of struggling through the thing and always I'll walk over and I'll say, ìhey Joey and Charlie up here need a partner to work with, why don't you move up to that area of the classroom and work with them on the projectî so always trying to integrate them into the class process.

Sandra Connelly
Instructional Professor - CIAS

I tell my students on the first day of class every year that it's not me as your instructor, we have an instructional team and that team is me, the interpreters, the captionists, the note takers and the students. It has to be everybody on board or we don't get anywhere so it has to be that and if the students see that, see that the relationship between the interpreters and the captionists and the faculty is a very strong one and a very supportive one their dynamic in the class changes as well. So the students see the respect that is needed to get the job done and then they understand the respect that is needed from their end to get the learning done.

Carol Fillip
Associate Professor - CIAS

With my design students, they will be working on a project and many times we all hang them up and then we all have to talk about them. The thing is is that it’s what we do so there’s always classroom discussion, it’s not just a lecture class a lot of times it’s someone standing up in front of the class and lecturing. So what I do which I think is beneficial for all the students and it’s not just the deaf and hard of hearing I think having things written down on paper so what I do is I come up with a list of questions that is directly related to the objectives of the project and I have students rotate around the classroom and a lot of time I have them working collaboratively, sometimes independently and they write written comments on everybody’s work and so after that’s done then each student sits back down in their spot and reads the comments and I go around the room and force them to talk about so it’s nice because it’s almost like they have a cheat sheet to go by and somehow they don’t seem intimidated. I do it for a lot of different reasons but it’s a struggle getting especially freshmen and sophomores, any freshmen and sophomores to talk about their work and to be an active participant in the classroom discussions so I think it’s good advice for anybody teaching any student.

Question:
Is there a benefit to using MyCourses related to creating equal access for all students in your class?

Click on the speaker images below to see video of the teacher's comments.

Patricial Iglesias
Associate Professor - COE

We're doing recitations in my class every Monday night and the TA is responsible for recitations so we are doing sometimes online recitations and the TA is using like a chat, I never used it before but I know she is using a chat tool on MyCourses and the student can ask questions from home so they can do recitation from home and then they can chat with the TA and the TA is telling me that its really popular. Not only for the hearing but also for the deaf students because they feel like they are all equal, right and they can ask questions and she's responding and everybody sees what she's responding so that's really good.

Philip Gelsomino II
Visiting Lecturer - SCB

I think there is and it's the discussion room that we use when the projects come out. So instead of everybody emailing me and expecting an answer I simply say go on the discussion room because if you have the question probably everybody in the class has the question regardless of who you are, and this way everybody can get the same information. They can read the thought process that each student is asking or giving a response, they have the same data, the same words everybody can see it, everybody can participate and then I chime in when they are either going in the right direction they get a smiley face. If they're way off base they get a frown face.

Laura Dwyer
Seniior Lecturer - SCB

I use MyCourses exclusively in my classes and I post every power point after the class, I don't post them before class because then that's a good excuse for them to not come to class. So I do that, I also post all classroom handouts in a dated folder for each class so they can go back and access whatever problems we worked on or questions we talked about. Other than that, I'll post keys to homework problems that MyCourses as well. I do use it exclusively and then I just post everything that's handed out in the classroom.

Question:
Have you utilized the flipped classroom approach and do you think this approach creates any challenges for the Deaf/HH students?

Click on the images below to see video of the teacher's comments.

Laura Dwyer
Senior Lecturer - SCB

I do that a little bit, so that they have to watch videos like Lynda.com and in Internet Marketing I've used that as well they have to watch videos ahead of time. And that can be helpful, I think the most important thing deaf students need to think about that I tell all students is to come to class. Skipping class is directly correlated with bad grades, I find. It doesn't matter if you're hearing or not, a hard of hearing student.

Sandra Connelly
Instructional Professor - COS

Getting everything ready and doing it well is hard. Right, because you are essentially making an entire class on your own to either a video camera or a studio set-up, and you're teaching a screen which is also very difficult for people when you have no feedback about what you are saying, trying to convey information in a meaningful way becomes very difficult. You also have to have the time to say is this accessible to everybody, so it's not just the time that it's gonna take to caption everything or in my case I added a sign language interpreter in all of my videos, so it's the time it takes me to produce the video, her to sign the video, me to put her into that video, then me to caption all the videos and then get them posted for the students is a huge timeline associated with it.

Question:
How do you handle using YouTube videos or movies as a part of your classroom lecture?

Click on the speaker images below to see video of the teacher's comments.

Laura Dwyer
Senior Lecturer - SCB

I teach marketing so there's a lot of you know types of videos showing advertisements in class, that kind of thing and if I am showing that I always make sure it's closed captioned. That does limit sometimes what I can show and I always err on the side of not showing something if it isn't closed captioned. I will not use the YouTube closed captioning because their usually very poorly done and it's embarrassing frankly. So if I do use a video it has to be closed captioned and if I use a Lynda.com video those are always very well captioned. I'll also print out the transcript and I hand the transcript out to everyone in the classroom so it isn't just like a ok, you guys over here here's the transcript for you, everybody gets the transcript because frankly everybody could use a reading tool while they are watching the video as well. So, yeah, a deaf student shouldn't come to the classroom and have to not enjoy every aspect of what happens in the classroom.

Gina Ferrari
Senior Lecturer - CIAS

I'll show slides, I'll show work so the interpreter will be there for that. Very rarely do I show film or video but when I do it's captioned, I make sure of that so there's a clear understanding, communication to the deaf culture and students.

Mike Palanski
Associate Professor - COB

I tend to use a lot of video clips in class so just making sure that those are captioned ahead of time. I use a lot of movies right off of dvd, so captioning is generally not a problem. Sometimes if I want to pull down a youtube clip I just have to be a little bit more proactive, and allow a little more lead time to make sure that it’s accessible. The other big thing is just to be proactive, talk to the students no two students are alike and have different preferences on how to communicate so usually what I do on the first day of class is to invite all of the deaf or hard of hearing students up to the front after class and we just have a little conversation about how do you want to handle this? And I sort of let them take the lead a lot of times.

Question:
Can you describe a benefit to working with NTID Support faculty?

Click on the speaker images below to see video of the teacher's comments.

Patricia Iglesias
Associate Professor - COE

What can I say about that I mean it's really we have that amazing support faculty that they are there to help our students and also to help us somehow. Because you know sometimes the students need extra help after hours and they can come to my office hours but if they have another person who is helping them, specifically about my class it's really an amazing tool that sometimes we don't know that we have there. So, not only for NTID support faculty also we have notetakers, right that is really nice if you can check your notes, they know that the notetaking is taking, also you have interpreters in class sometimes, that is really nice you collaborate with the interpreters you know in advance some of them are asking me you know to give them access to the power point presentation with time so they can see them and we also have c-print person so that's important.

Laurie Dwyer
Senior Lecturer - SCB

I think they're a great resource for you know, walking in and saying you know I'm having an issue, what should I do, I'm not sure how to work this out is it me, right because sometimes it could be me the faculty who is causing the problem and I get a lot of help there.

Sandi Connelly
Instructional Professor - COS

So, I tend to work pretty closely with mine and I guess I've had the benefit of having a lot of the same support folks over the years so we have a relationship, we know they know what I expect from my students and they know how to better prepare them for that. I meet with my support staff once a week in an organizational meeting of this is what we're going to cover this week in class, this is what they have to do as far a assignments, this is the struggles I have seen in the past on these kinds of assignments where you might have pitfalls. We can talk about how the students are doing in the class as far as okay Susie hasn't been to class in 3 weeks, have you seen her in tutoring, has she been showing up to anything else? Or Johnny comes to class but he talks to everybody around him and doesn't pay any attention in class, how can we get him to focus more and think about the purpose of being in class, it's not a social activity. So I get a lot of feedback from my support folks in that way.