Please enjoy this video about “The ASL Clear Project: Engaging Deaf Students in STEM Learning,” which provides a brief look at a few of the positive impacts of this project being experienced by K-12 teachers and students. The project began in 2005, and there have been many more discoveries we look forward to sharing - it was a challenge to choose one to summarize in 3 minutes! We are very excited to be developing a new set of specialized ASL materials in partnership with Harvard’s Center for Integrated Quantum Materials (http://ciqm.harvard.edu/), which will be made available to CIQM’s faculty, ASL interpreters, and Deaf interns from Gallaudet University. 

Visit our online browser-based app at http://aslclear.org (mobile development funding coming soon, we hope!). If you’re not an ASL signer, click ‘English’ at the top right to see the text associated with each unit. There are many units in our pipeline awaiting release, and many more topics to develop. For more information on the Center for Research and Training at The Learning Center of the Deaf, please visit our website at: http://www.asleducation.org/ and, if you wish, follow the ASL Clear Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ASLClear/

Our team looks forward to discussing your comments and questions! We also have a few questions of our own, which we invite you to consider and respond to:

• How did you most effectively learn STEM concepts in school? What role did academic texts and vocabulary in your language play in learning STEM content?
• Why is it critical that projects like this one be led and shaped by Deaf subject matter experts?
• What benefits do you see in learning STEM through a visual, three-dimensional language?
• What elements do you believe would support and enrich STEM education with deaf ASL signing K-12 students?

Hello from the Educational Neuroscience program at Gallaudet University! We have a lot of interests in common with you. I have several other comments and ideas, but for now, a simple question. Any plans to add neuroscience or brain-related terms to your online resource? In our program and research labs here we have a robust ASL neuroscience vocabulary, but the vocabulary is not well-standardized or documented. 

Hello Lorna! What you're describing would be a perfect collaboration between our two teams! And the work we're doing with Harvard and Gallaudet for the CIQM project would provide a great model. We'd be delighted to partner with you all in pursuing funding and developing neuroscience and brain-related modules. How has your team documented the neuroscience vocabulary you've created within your lab?

Watching the teachers and students use signed STEM terms, developed by your project, offered a really good illustration of the needs of deaf students and barriers they encounter in STEM classrooms. The importance of including deaf subject matter experts was also evident.  I'm looking forward to visiting your website!  

Would you explain a little more about the process through which educators identify terms/concepts that require specialized signs, and how you go about developing and testing them?  When you introduce new STEM signs to students, how do you measure whether the new sign seems promising or needs further revision before sharing it broadly?

Thanks for your comments and the great questions, Karen! Over the past 15 years, our team has refined a multi-step process of evaluating drafts of ASL instructional materials and newly coined vocabulary. We begin with several rounds of internal review and then invite external evaluators into the process. As part of the internal review phase, Deaf subject matter experts begin using the new ASL terms immediately in their own academic discourse - as professionals, scholars, and teachers - which serves as a very rigorous testing ground! So rigorous, in fact, our experience is that a very high percentage of the signs released on ASL Clear are well-received and adopted by users. We're writing up a paper on this very topic (in press soon, we hope). It would be wonderful to conduct a formal study and get some solid data on this question. 

Thank you for sharing that additional information--I certainly expected that the process was a rigorous one, but it is good to see the intensity of the internal stages followed by external evaluator involvement whose "outsider" perspective is likely to support refinements.  I'll watch your website for the paper--I'm eager to learn more!  Your response also highlights, again, the essential role of deaf subject matter experts.

I think the field would benefit from a formal study when your project is ready.  In particular, understanding the immediate affordances and challenges that ASL Clear provides for deaf educators, who are not subject matter experts but who provide regular support for students, might be important to investigate.  

Best wishes on your continued work! 

Hi Jeanne,

Great video about the ASL Clear project.  You probably know that I have been thinking about this for many years.  It is great to see that you have more support to expand the project.  It is very much needed.  How many STEM terms are now in the ASL Clear database?  What is the goal in terms of number of signs and STEM areas you will be covering?

Richard

It's truly a shock to me that this area of ASL development is just happening now, and how wonderful that your team is getting it done (finally!). My oldest son has Down Syndrome, causing him to struggle with spoken language in his early years. It's common to teach sign language to young children like him and their families/community. He is in his twenties now but I remember learning some WONDERFUL signs that in three dimensions captured exactly what the term communicated. Some of our favorites were whale and helicopter and crab (delightful). I was reminded when I saw what your ASL Clear team brought to "photosynthesis." You ask about benefits, I'm sure they are far wider than for just those who can't communicate without sign language. Embodying the meaning of a word with shape and movement in your hands feels like a legitimate element of "universal design for learning." Are you familiar with UDL and have you spoken to them? I'm already inspired by the connection your team makes here in the Video Showcase with the SAIL team. Wow!! 

What a great project...and video! Has your project ventured into informal STEM learning environments as well, or primarily K-12? 

Thanks for the kind words, Brooks! Yes, and that work is so much fun. We've had the pleasure of collaborating with The Discovery Museum in Acton, Mass, and the National Estuarine Reserves of New England (with NOAA funding). We're discussing projects with several other informal STEM learning venues as well. 

Jeanne:

We should talk. We have  incorporated quite a few terms into our glossaries for use in informal venues that might be of interest/use to your project. If you take a look at our video, you'll see what we are doing.

Jeanne, 

I just mentioned ASL Clear to another vidoehall presentation team, an International Network for STEM Media-making. Eric Hamilton, their Lead, is a colleague at Pepperdine where I adjunct in a doctoral program. He is interested in boundary-crossing using videoconferencing across geographic boarders around the planet. Employing universal signs for science and math concepts seemed another way of crossing boundaries, or perhaps thinking about other learners who use ASL to communicate to join the exchange. 

It may be a stretch but I thought you might be interested in their work.

This video provides clear information about STEM classes and teachers being able to sign clearly to help students understand the meaning of the sign language they apply to the subject. :)