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‘A beautiful way of saying a lot’: sign language brings benefits to the organic chemistry classroom

Christina Goudreau Collison works with Deaf students to develop clear signs for organic chemistry terms — which could also help students with non-conventional learning needs.
  1. Jyoti Madhusoodanan

    1. Jyoti Madhusoodanan is a science journalist based in Portland, Ore. She covers science, health and health equity for Nature, Undark, Science, and other outlets.

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This is my 20th year teaching undergraduate students at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York. I’ve always had somewhere between one and ten Deaf students in my classroom, but they’ve been in a sea of hearing students. The university provides sign-language interpreters for courses, but I recognized how exhausting it was for Deaf students to keep up in my classes with the time lag that comes with interpreting. Sometimes it felt like I could almost see them thinking, “I’m just going to figure this out later. I’ll try to read the book.” They were clearly not getting the same classroom experience as the hearing students.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00738-w

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

References

  1. Clark, K. et al. J. Chem. Educ. 99, 122–128 (2022).

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