Overview:
In the college classroom, access to content for deaf and hard-of-hearing students (DHH) is mediated via American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters. When communicating in ASL, interpreters must choose the correct signs to indicate meaning, a practice known as signing with conceptual accuracy. Conceptual accuracy is critical to understanding because the interpreter will not use signs that simply match the English words but signs that convey the meaning of the concept being taught. Because it is rare for interpreters to possess STEM backgrounds, technical information in these courses is often lost in translation. Compounding this issue is a lack of well-developed technical ASL signs in fields like physics.

Intellectual Merit:
This IUSE Engaged Student Learning Level 1 project proposes to create and test a novel, and scalable solution that addresses the language challenges present for DHH students in the traditional introductory Physics II (Electricity and Magnetism) and Physics III (Modern Physics) classrooms. A comprehensive series of short (2-5 minute) conceptually accurate, signed videos each centered around a singular topic will be created, covering the complete content of both courses. We will test this approach by measuring the effectiveness of these videos on interpreters’ comprehension, their ability to reproduce conceptually-accurate interpretation, and on DHH students’ understanding of the videos only, conceptually-accurate interpretation only, and conceptually-accurate interpretation with video access.

Broader Impacts:
DHH undergraduate students participate in STEM fields, and graduate with STEM degrees, at significantly lower rates than their hearing peers. A successful demonstration of this approach would provide a template for building bridges between STEM content and linguistic content, thereby enabling equal access to information for DHH students in STEM degree programs.