EDUC20069: Deafness and Communication

-one practical assignment due mid-semester(50%);

-one 2000 word essay due during the examination period (50%)

You are given a choice of 1 of 5 essay topics to select and the 1800-2200 word academic essay is due in the first day of the exam period. For this reason, it is good to make a start on the assignment early (e.g. plan your references and what you will discuss early in the semester), as you may find that you have an exam the day of or the day after your essay is due (not fun). Make sure your APA 6 referencing is flawless and that you read over your essay numerous times to avoid silly mistakes (for instance I forgot the word "to" about 5 times in my essay). Overall, I think the essay is harder to do well in compared to the practical assignment. I think you are more likely to get higher marks for your resource/500 word essay for the amount of hours you put in than the 2000 word essay. So that's just another reason to make a start early on this assignment and not to cram for it in the final days that it's due.

-80% attendance requirement in lectures and seminars. So there's the option of missing (a) 2 lectures only (and therefore not writing 2 reflections), (b) 2 seminars only or (c) 1 lecture (and therefore not writing 1 reflection) and 1 seminar

-Essay "plan" for the practical assignment (see below)

Most lectures were recorded, but I recall there being 2 that weren't.

I'd encourage students to attend lectures rather than listen via echo360. The lectures are delivered at an appropriate pace (not rushed) and towards assignment time, you take away the concepts that are most relevant to your assignment topics. Most of the lectures were interesting, but I think you're bound to find one or two that are a little dry. As part of the attendance requirement, you are required to write "reflections" after each lecture, these aren't marked or anything and just consist of 3/4 or so lines perhaps summing up the key topics you took away from a lecture, or writing some questions about a lecture that you'd like to find some answers to. You don't have to physically attend each lecture in order to submit your reflections for meeting the attendance requirement, as they may also be emailed to your tutor. However, it's better to actually attend the lectures and submit reflections that way as you tend to put them off during the semester to the point where you realise that you haven't emailed 4 reflections in by week 12.

This was a hard assignment in the sense that you didn't know if you were doing it correctly. It consisted of a "resource" that addressed a specific target audience, such as secondary school students or primary schoolteachers, about a specific topic of deafness as covered through lectures. For instance, you could target the family of an elderly individual who has age-related hearing loss and provide them with some information about the kind of changes that may need to be implemented in order to communicate appropriately with that hearing-impaired family member. Or you might choose to target a couple who have just found out through screening that their newborn baby is profoundly deaf and provide them with some information about the cochlear implant. There are so many possibilities that you can choose, and honestly I spent most of my time thinking about what topic I would choose as opposed to physically creating my resource. In addition to the resource, you are also required to write a 500 word mini academic essay (i.e. avoiding the first person "I") that should include why the resource is relevant (e.g. if your resource is about the cochlear implant you could talk about how the number of deaf individuals that are undergoing cochlear implant surgery is on the rise and why), who the resource targets and why, and why your resource is appropriate for that target audience (e.g. if your audience is primary school students you might choose to make a children's book). Your tutor will also inform you that you must email them or hand in a plan for your resource (however, you can change resource topics at the last minute if you want to). What I took away from this assignment was that many students chose brochures or posters for there resource, so if you choose to go down that route then think outside the box (i.e. creatively) about how yours will look different from the rest. I ended up choosing to do a website, and I was surprised to be the only one in my seminar group that did that. It's not overly difficult to choose a technical approach for your resource as you can use website hosting sites such as google sites and I felt as though a brochure or poster was too constricting to fit in all the information I wanted to. With the resource, there is a designated seminar where each student speaks about their resource and why they chose their respective resource (don't worry, the oral presentation itself does not count towards your assignment mark), but it's good to be confident about it as you do put in a lot of hours for this assignment.

4 out of 5

I can confidently say that i've never experienced seminars/tutorials that are as chill as the one's in D&C. They mainly consist of watching youtube videos about the lecture topics and lots of group discussions and activities (mainly with the people on your given table). Sometimes, though, I felt like what we were dwelling on topics that were quite irrelevant to the subject. For instance, we spent 2 seminars learning how to finger spell. It probably would have been more beneficial to use that kind of time in order to discuss the two assignments either as a class or from the tutor addressing us.

Journal articles posted on the LMS. You don't have to read every week's allocated reading as many of them will be irrelevant to your two assignments, but it's good to read perhaps half of them.

Lecturer(s): -

1*1 hr lecture per week + 1*2hr seminar per week

2014 Semester 2

H1