CCE Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Computing Technology in Education (DCTE)

Department

College of Engineering and Computing

Advisor

Gertrude W. Abramson

Committee Member

Qi Wang

Committee Member

Steven R. Terrell

Keywords

Composite Screen Solution, Deaf Students, Hard of Hearing Students, Higher Education, Live-Streaming Class Sessions, Web Conferencing Technology

Abstract

A mainstream course has several components that deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students must reconcile. In class, components can include the instructor, projection display, whiteboard, interpreting, and real-time captioning. Outside the classroom, components can include materials from the instructor, notes generated by a note-taker, and a lecture transcript generated via real-time captioning. Web conferencing software can be harnessed to create inclusive experiences for DHH students. Such software can place all components of a class session on a single screen to create a composite screen solution that can be viewed by students in real-time and recorded for later, self-paced review. A composite screen solution may increase performance and comprehension of DHH students in mainstream courses, along with their hearing counterparts. This mixed-methods study focused on the implementation of web conferencing software in a mainstream, college course to explore utilization of a composite screen solution by students inside the classroom. Quantitative data were collected and analyzed to determine impact on student performance. Qualitative data were also collected and analyzed to investigate participant perceptions about the intervention. There was no significant impact on student performance found based on student self-selected usage of the composite screen solution throughout the term. Hearing students utilized the composite screen solution significantly more than DHH students to compensate for obstructed views due to the design of a classroom and to make follow-along demonstrations easier. Alternatively, DHH students had unobstructed views with the projection screen and ASL interpreter in their field of vision. Overall, the live stream of the composite screen solution was not widely utilized by the intended target audience, DHH students, as anticipated. Instead, the results illustrate the importance of design and how a solution has the potential to help an unintended audience with unanticipated issues. The generalizability of the results, as they pertain to DHH students, are limited given the number of DHH participants.

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