Show 05 -- Project Access

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Hello, and welcome to the Disability411 podcast, the podcast for disability professionals. My name is Beth Case, and I’m your host. You may remember a few weeks ago as the future of the week, I mentioned the ClassAct web site. Well, Gary and Susan are two of the people that are involved in creating that web site and we have a very interesting interview with them.

But before we get to that, I do have a few announcements that I would like to make. First, I had been very neglectful in mentioning the musicians that were gracious enough to provide us with the music for the show -- The Brobdingnagian Bards. I mentioned them in the first show we use their music and I keep forgetting to thank them in the other shows. So I’d like to send out a big thank you to the Bards for letting me use their music.

I’ve also added something kind of fun to our web site. If you go to our web site at disability411.jinkle.com, you will see a link in the upper right hand corner that says Frappr. If you click on that you can enter in your zip code and that will show a map of where the Disability 411 listeners are. And just think it might be really interesting and kind of fun to see where you all are located. So if you like, you can go to that link and put in your information. You don’t have to put in your real name if you’re worried about that or anything, you can just put in your first name or a nickname, whatever. I just think it would be very interesting to see where you all are living.

We interrupt this podcast for a slight edit. At this point in the original recording, I thanked someone who was very, very gracious in volunteering to help me transcribe some of the podcast and I mentioned his name and thanked him profusely and I asked if there were others out there who would like to volunteer their time so that I didn’t become too dependent on this one poor soul and his generosity. After recording that, I found out that he preferred to remain anonymous. So let me just send out my thank yous to, well, you know who you are. And still ask if there is anyone out there who would like to follow his fine example and volunteer some time in helping transcribe some of the shows. If so, please just e-mail me at disability411@jinkle.com. And now I’ll return you to the originally recorded podcast.

I’d also like to ask you all to help me with a show that I’m hoping to do in a week or two and that is Christmas ideas for people with disabilities. I know it doesn’t exactly fall into the professional development that I’m trying to gear this show towards. But seeing as how Christmas is coming up faster than most of us expected, I’m interested in if you have a loved one in your life who has a disability, what kind of Christmas gifts might you get for them. And, yeah, I know there’s lots of practical things that people with disabilities need, but I’m also interested in ,you know, the kind of fun things or the things that might make their lives easier but they might not go buy for themselves. For example, I’ve seen Scrabble games that have large tiles, so that if you have low vision you can still see the tiles. Maybe kitchen gadgets that are easier to use or just, I’m just interested in your ideas. So if you can send your ideas for Christmas gifts for people who have disabilities to my e-mail at disability411@jinkle.com, then I will feature them in an upcoming show.

And one last thing before we get our interview I received an e-mail from somebody and I’m hoping that you all can help me provide him with some information. And I’m reading this e-mail with permission. It’s from Andrew Eller. I’m not going to tread the whole thing but I am going to read some segments He says “I'm doing a video presentation and giving a speech on Disabled Americans in regards to advancements (as well as setbacks) in areas of leisure and recreation. It is for a Recreation and Leisure Studies course at San José State University in California. I am thinking of gearing it towards high school and college students, as that is my audience and I think it would grab their attention more.” And then he says, “However, I am not familiar with all the resources available for the disabled community, and I am hoping that maybe you know of a few good resources that I could check out. Or better yet, if you can think of any key points that I would probably miss while researching that would be good to include in a speech, I would love that.” Now, recreation is not a particularly strong area of mine, so I thought I would put a call out to the disability 411 listeners and if you have any good resources on recreation and leisure for people with disabilities that might help Andrew with his presentation, please drop me an e-mail disability411@jinkle.com. I will forward your responses to Andrew and read some of them on the air.

Well, I guess that’s about all for announcements, so without any further delay let’s get to our interview.

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Beth Case: I am very excited today to have with us, Susan Foster and Gary Long. They work at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology with a program called Project Access. And, I am just going to turn it over to them and have them say a little bit more about their program.

Susan Foster: Hi, I am Sue and I guess Gary and I are going to share with you some of the background about how we got involved with Project Access and tell you a little bit about ourselves and what we do and how it relates to the inclusion of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Gary is there anything that you want to say as we start off?

Gary Long: I am Gary and I am a research psychologist at NTID and I’ll probably tell you a couple of stories today.

Susan Foster: Good. I am also in the same department as Gary. I am a researcher there and I also teach in our Teacher Preparation Program, preparing teachers of the deaf to work in secondary school settings, and Gary does the same thing.

Beth Case: Fantastic.

Susan Foster: So, how did we get involved with Project Access? Well, about ten years ago, which shows you that we have been at this a while, we were both focusing on research in higher education and we were doing interviews with deaf and hard-of-hearing students as well as with faculty, mainstreamed faculty at RIT. And, we began to realize that even though students may have all of the support services that we could offer them, including notetakers and tutors and also interpreters, that the playing field was still not level, that there was still a really important thing missing.

Gary Long: RIT has about 16,000 students, a thousand of whom are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

Beth Case: Wow.

Gary Long: And, not only did we interview these folks but we went into the classroom and observed faculty teaching and so, you know, it was pretty interesting because even the faculty knew things weren’t going as smoothly as they should. So, even though we were in the middle of a research study, they hit us up after the observations and said, did I do it right? Were there things that I could have been doing differently? And, of course, we are dying to tell them what we saw but because it was a research study, we really couldn’t.

Susan Foster: Yea, and it was clear that many of these teachers were very interested in serving their deaf and hard-of-hearing students and making them a part of the mainstreamed class. Many of them were unaware of the subtle ways in which their instructional behavior made it harder or easier for a deaf or hard-of-hearing student. So, we began to think that maybe, instead of just thinking in terms of providing support services, we had to go one step farther and focus on actually helping faculty to change their behaviors as teachers in the classroom. We also realized that many of our hearing students were selecting class sections where there would be support services for deaf or hard-of-hearing students and when they were asked why, they said, well, often when there is an interpreter in the classroom, small modifications began to happen that were helpful for them as well. And, that led us to think in terms of universal design. That many of the changes we might ask our instructors to make would benefit not just deaf or hard-of-hearing students, but, in fact, all of the students in the classroom.

Beth Case: We find that a lot in providing services and accommodations for several different kinds of disabilities that it is not just the student with the disability that benefits, but it is actually just good teaching methodology that benefits everyone in the classroom.

Gary Long: It was interesting when we were surveying the students in the classroom in RIT classes. The deaf students were saying, you know it is the pace of instruction that is so fast, it is just too much, too quick. It is difficult for them to process and get all of that. What was also interesting was that the hearing students said exactly the same thing. The pace was too fast. So, it wasn’t just an issue for the deaf or hard-of-hearing students. It was an issue for all of the students.

Beth Case: That is very interesting.

Susan Foster: So, we began to think about the instructors, their concerns, the students and their needs and we ended up writing up some small grants on our own campus where they support with a small amount of money, a new innovation. And, so we began to work within the College of Science to deliver information in the form of lunch presentations, brown bag seminars, focus groups and student panels. And, it really went over well. This led us to seek some federal funding. And, we ended up with two Department of Education grants. One of them is called Demonstration Projects to Ensure Students with Disabilities Access to Higher Education, which is a mouthful.

Beth Case: That is quite a title!

Susan Foster: And, the other one is for the improvement of postsecondary education. And, those two grants have enabled us to do a whole lot of really neat things and together, we have called them Project Access.

Gary Long: And, over a year and a half, two years of doing these workshops, what happened was we do a workshop on a specific topic, let’s say, how an instructor works with an interpreter in the classroom. And, then as we listen to what the instructors were interested in, in terms of what other topics that they had that they wanted us to explore, we developed a new workshop for the next month. And, so we ended up with all of these workshop materials that we developed. And, as part of the grant, we were in a position to really package those in a way that is really….

Susan Foster: So, we began three years ago to offer summer institutes nationally. And, now we are reaching out beyond our own RIT campus but we are bringing in as well, faculty from other campuses around the country. And, generally, we would bring in teams and the team would include instructional faculty from a college with a disability service coordinator. And, together they would come in and work for a whole week on learning about the needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing students and then how best to meet those needs. And, then at the end of the week, they generally left with a lot more information and a lot more confidence in what they were able to do on their own campuses. So, we would provide follow-up for them over the next year and that week of workshops is part of the package that Gary was just talking about.

Gary Long: One of the things that we found through our work at RIT and then we continued into the workshops was that faculty want to hear directly from the deaf students. And, so the first thing that we do with any new group is to have a student panel and really have the deaf students tell their stories about their experiences that they have had. And, I know that one of those stories was a lab setting where they were working with a deaf partner in the class but all the other students are hearing, of course. And, they were told to add water to this mixture that they were making and at the end of the class it didn’t work out. And, they were kind of being berated by the faculty member. What happened here? What went wrong? And, as they went back and looked at what happened, the interpreter had signed to add water to this mixture and so they added tap water and what the instructor wanted them to do was to add distilled water. So, you can see how just little things in the communication can throw off, like an experiment and make it go askew. So, they have got really powerful stories to tell. To be successful at that level, the deaf student really has to put in much more effort to really want it. So, even with the support services there are many things that the teachers can do to make it easier for the students.

Beth Case: One thing that I am very excited about is the web site that you have all put together. And, I really want to share with our audience about that site and what they may be able to benefit from that.

Susan Foster: Sure. Well, it is called the Class Act web site and it is really a compilation of the materials and ideas that we developed with our faculty and students and with our support service providers. So, what we tried to do was create a multi-media interactive web site that would allow people to really get a feel for what the issues were and how they could meet them. So, we have how many pages, Gary?

Gary Long: We have over fifty pages in there and then, by the way, it is at www.RIT.edu/classact.

Beth Case: And, we will have a link to that web site on our show notes.

Gary Long: Cool. Well, anyway besides the text, we tried to make it, we tried to get those stories up there, both the teachers’ stories and the students’ stories. So, there are over 105 videos and there are many hand-outs that the teachers can use in terms of how do you interact with an interpreter and/or a notetaker or a captionist in the classroom? Just kind of a check-list to help guide them along their way.

Susan Foster: And, some of our tools are kind of fun. I mean, we understand how hard it is to change any behaviors and our own included. And, so when we thought about what might help someone to modify a behavior, we tried to go beyond sort of conceptual things to just things that will kind of grab your attention. So, one example is, many of our students say that it is very important that the instructor face the class and not turn their backs to the class while they write on the board. Well, that is a really hard behavior to change if you have been doing that for twenty years.

Beth Case: Right.

Susan Foster: So, the tool on that particular page isn’t text or it isn’t a checklist. Instead what it is, is a series of two or three images, one on each page that are very bright and colorful. And, we instruct the individual to print out that colorful page and just to tape it at the back of the room. And, then all they have to remember is if I can see it, I can speak. If I can’t see it, I don’t speak.

Beth Case: Very creative!

Susan Foster: So, it is not so much, do this, do that, change this, hand out that. It is also kind of fun things that will just give you a trigger to alter a behavior.

Gary Long: Tell them about the cup of coffee.

Susan Foster: Oh, I love that one. We had one faculty member, when we observed his class, he talked a mile a minute. And, one day when we were in there, he was much slower and I was one of the observers as was one of our deaf students. And, when we debriefed later, we realized that he had brought coffee to class and every time that he paused to sip it, you could see the entire room, deaf and hearing alike just take a deep breath because he stopped talking. So, later we told him, why don’t you bring a beverage to class and if you do that, then you are going to be much slower, much more modified in your pace. And, so he started doing that. So, it led to a whole thing about bringing beverages to class. And so the tool on that particular web site with regard to pace is a picture of all different kinds of beverage glasses – ice cream sodas, a cup of coffee, cup of tea. And, you put it on your door just as you leave the room and you keep next to it a jar of coins so that you can stop at the vending machine and buy a drink and take it with you. And, if you finish that glass of water during your class, then you probably slowed down. If it is full, then you know that you went too fast.

Beth Case: That is a wonderfully creative tool! I know another one that you have that I like is when you show a PowerPoint. I am teaching a class myself this semester and we do put up a PowerPoint and immediately start talking about giving the students an opportunity to read what is on that slide which would be particularly difficult for a deaf student who can’t read the slide and watch the interpreter at the same time. So, you all have a little icon to look at, a countdown that will remind you to give them a few seconds before they start talking.

Gary Long: It is called the Pacer Spacer and it is a little like you said, it is a little icon that is downloadable onto your PowerPoint slides and it is just a reminder for the faculty member to just wait those few seconds before they start speaking because it takes time to process information. So, it is really important for faculty to give those extra few minutes to allow the students to read it and I am not just talking about the deaf or hard-of-hearing students. There are many other students who would appreciate that processing time before they start talking. So, it is just a reminder.

Beth Case: I would like to also just point out that the materials that are on this web site can be used by anyone that wants to provide some information for their faculty, some tools for some faculty. It is not specific to your college.

Susan Foster: Oh, absolutely not. The materials are intended to be used everywhere, in fact, we have about 3,500 hits a month on that web site now. And, it is from all over the place. We get them from the Far East. We get them from Europe. We get them from South America and from the U.S. And, people are visiting the site everyday to get and download information. And, some of the people are being very creative. We have a library page and a teaching tools page and if you open that up, you will find all of the videos in one place and all of the hand-outs and so forth. And, what people are doing it, they will go to the videos and they will make their own PowerPoint. So, they want to give a presentation and they can download and clip in any of our own student or faculty videos and then use that to create a message that is live, that has people talking, that is not just words just up there. So, we hope people will use that in creative ways.

Beth Case: It is just a very exciting project. Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about?

Gary Long: We have a book that we have put together that can be purchased from BookSurge and maybe we can have you put the link to BookSurge online. It is called the Project Access Workshop Planner’s Guide and it really is a compilation of all the materials that we have developed over the years and edited to provide workshops in eight different areas. For example, if there is a simulated student panel there is an in-class experience for faculty to experience what it is like to be a deaf student in the classroom. And, it is not just…. There is how to run the workshop in the book but there is actually the PowerPoints and everything that you need on two CD’s that go with the book. So, it really is a nice compilation if you are in the business of providing training as a support service person to faculty or other people in the area. It is a great resource for that.

Susan Foster: There is also a unit in there on universal design for teaching. And, that is very popular because we found as we said earlier in the interview, it is very, very important for faculty to understand the changes they make for a deaf student will make them a better student for everyone in their class. We all know that if we don’t incorporate universal design, we will lose faculty because they may have a deaf student one year and then not for two more. And, so it is very critical that they understand. So, there is a whole unit that can be delivered with PowerPoints and suggestions about how teaching will effect everyone in the class.

Gary Long: I just observed a teacher in California and one of the things…… that she had made a plan at the end of our workshop that she was going to put all of her notes up online for the students. She thought that it would be very helpful for the deaf students. Well, when I went and observed her, she didn’t had any deaf students in the class but the average test score and she has been giving those tests for a number of years, went up four points. In the end, she asked the students how many of you used the notes online? Over half of them in the class had and a number of them spoke up and said that they felt that it helped them do better on the tests. So, these are good teaching things, really.

Beth Case: Well, I really appreciate you all taking the time to come and talk to us today. We will have their web site and information on our show notes and I encourage you all to go and check out their information. It is just extremely professional and very useful and very well organized and I am just terribly, terribly impressed. As always, if you have any questions, you can e-mail us at disability411@jinkle.com and we will try to answer your questions in a future show. We will be back in just a minute.

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Have questions or need clarification on disability law? For answers and more information, please call the Disability Law Resource Project at ILRU, a program of TIRR at 1-800-949-4232 this is both voice and TTY compatible. Or visit our website at www.dlrp.org. The Disability Law Resource Project is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Rehabilitation and Research, a program of the Department of Education.

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The feature this week is a book called “100 Things Every College Student With a Disability Ought to Know” by Kendra D. Johnson and Trudy N Hines. This is a very friendly, very non-threatening book with incredibly valuable information for anyone with a disability who’s considering going to college. In fact, this would make a really great Christmas present for, say, a high school student with a disability that’s thinking about going to college. If I could make this book required reading for every student before they go to college, I would. It’s really, really good. Not only does it have wonderful tips and information on what to expect in college and how to get the most out of college for students with disabilities, it also includes references for further information that is one of the most comprehensive and useful lists that I’ve ever seen. So if you’re interested in finding this book, I will provide the web link on our show notes at disability411.jinkle.com. Well, that’s it for today’s show. Thank you all for listening and as always, if you have any comments, questions, feedback, please write me at disability411.jinkle.com. And visit our web site at disability411.jinkle.com. I’m your host, Beth Case and I’ll see you next time.

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The Disability411 podcast is brought to you by Jinkle.com, with the cooperation of the PEC Texas SOTAC, AHEAD in Texas, and DLRP, a project of ILRU, a program of TIRR.

If you’d like to know what all these abbreviations mean, visit our website at disability411.jinkle.com.

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(Transcribed by Beth Case. Interview transcription provided by Gary Long and Susan Foster)