Educational support for dhh students in postsecondary education A CoP approach

Introduction

The Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong has accumulated some experience in providing support to d/hh students at various educational levels. We believe a Community of Practice (CoP) among local institutions could be set up to tackle the challenges we share despite teaching in a setting that encompasses unique variables. The CoP “Educational Support for d/hh Students in Postsecondary Education” will therefore be conducted from September 2024 to July 2026. We believe 2 years should allow us to examine the nature of the types of accessibility measures we can offer to d/hh students to support their education. Our objectives are:

• To build a Community of Practice to support deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/hh) students pursuing postsecondary education
• To explore possible types of support that suit d/hh students’ diverse backgrounds and learning needs
• To raise awareness about ways to remove barriers to information accessibility in postsecondary education as experienced by d/hh students

• Improved understanding of the special learning needs of d/hh students pursuing education in the postsecondary context, including
• Acquisition of knowledge of how accommodations in the physical learning environment and hardware potentially support d/hh students to pursue education
• Adequate deployment of tools and aids, including real-time captioning, WTS system, note-taking, sign interpretation, and lecture recordings, to suit the diverse needs of d/hh students
• Development of new pedagogical strategies and practices
• Establishment of a support system with accommodations for in-class and course-end assessments