About Class Act

This website was developed with the support of grants from two Department of Education programs: first the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, and second Demonstration Projects to Ensure Students with Disabilities Access to a Quality Higher Education. However, the foundation for this website was laid in the years prior to these grants, and grew out of a collaborative effort between two colleges of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) — the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and the College of Science. The project was originally funded by a small internal grant through the RIT Office of the Provost.

We are of course delighted to acknowledge all of this support.

Faculty, staff, and students from these two colleges used the internal grant collaboratively to produce Project Access, an enterprise focused on improving inclusion of deaf and hard-of-hearing students in classroom instruction and learning. Project Access includes customized interactive workshops, focused classroom observations and feedback, student-run activities, and research. Currently, those associated with Project Access are working to become self-sustaining within the College of Science and to transfer this model to other academic units of RIT. Project Access provides the overarching vision and structure for the Class Act website as well as for the other products and activities of the Department of Education grants.

Our goal is to improve existing teaching practice regarding access for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in postsecondary classrooms.

We hope this website will increase faculty awareness of how their behaviors facilitate or hinder access. We present:

• Challenges faced by faculty members in working with deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

• Specific strategies for addressing these challenges by modifying teaching styles in ways that promote full inclusion.

• On-line videotapes of deaf and hard-of-hearing students describing challenges they face in college settings. These videos appear throughout the Challenges/Strategies section of the Class Act site.

• Handouts, with titles such as “Communication Guidelines for Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing and Hearing Students Working in Groups” appear in the Challenges/Strategies section. You can modify these and print them as needed for your use.

Please give us feedback on what you found useful, on areas that are not clear, or on missing information. If you have additional suggestions for materials, challenges, or strategies that can be added to the site, please let us know. We hope Class Act is a valuable resource and we look forward to hearing from you.