Succeeding in mainstream universities (at all levels) involves extra challenges for deaf and hard of hearing students. Skilled sign language interpreters and captioners with advanced domain knowledge are often difficult to find, multiple visual channels of information in the classroom can be hard to juggle, and collaboration both inside and outside the classroom is often strained due to language barriers. Furthermore, translation of advanced STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) topics into American Sign Language (ASL) is far from standardized, and often requires discussion between students and interpreters to devise consistent signs. Better access to classroom activities and a consistent, conceptually clear signing system for STEM topics are both vitally needed in order for deaf and hard of hearing students to advance in the sciences. Thus, in this project the PI will design, implement, and evaluate two distinct yet interconnected technologies. The first of these is ClassInFocus, a classroom platform to help students access remote interpreters and captioners, avoid visual dispersion, and facilitate interaction in the classroom. ClassInFocus will utilize the existing high bandwidth internet connections at multiple universities to create more opportunity for finding the best qualified interpreter or captioner for specific STEM topics. Designing, implementing, and evaluating technological solutions that best meet the educational needs of deaf and hard of hearing students is a challenging research problem; this immersive technology that brings many different technical and human resources into the classroom in an accessible and unobtrusive way is new to the field. ASL-STEM Forum, the second thrust of this work, will be an on-line video forum to facilitate discussion about signing for STEM topics. Visual collaboration between members of the community, in this case the Deaf Community, is important to ensure natural, conceptually correct, and community approved language progression. Designing, implementing, and evaluating a cyberinfrastructure solution to facilitate discussion about ASL vocabulary and grammar for STEM content, that will eventually serve as a resource for students, teachers, and interpreters involved in ASL for STEM fields, is another challenging research problem. Using social networking techniques to engage the deaf and hard of hearing community in discussions about ASL topics and vocabulary in STEM fields is entirely new to the field. This research will involve collaboration with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology, Gallaudet University, and the Shodor Education Foundation.
Broader Impacts: The new technologies to be developed as outcomes of this research will enable deaf and hard of hearing students to better access the STEM fields by improving the learning environment and the linguistic access to STEM content. Not only does this increase the likelihood that deaf people will attain college and graduate degrees, it will increase the participation of deaf and hard of hearing people in the development and research of new technology. Other students may also benefit from this technology, as digital notes and captions provide alternative access for students with learning disabilities and create opportunities for searchable archives of class content.
