EDUC20076: AUSLAN and Visual Communication

EDUC20076 - Reflection essay (30%), Documentation of practical learning (20%), Practical resource (50%).
EDUC20069 - Practical resource (50%), Essay (50%).

So the reason I’m grouping these two subjects together is because I find these two subjects really similar. I did AUSLAN and Visual Communication (AVC) in winter (July 14th to July 18th), and to be completely honest, it felt like déjà vu doing Deafness and Communication (DC) considering how similar the content and the assessment were. I’d say the major difference is that AVC focuses more on teaching you the very very basics of communicating through AUSLAN and involves more physical activities. It was like a drama class; not that I ever took drama. For lectures you will cover things like:

. History of sign language
. Various perspectives on deafness
. Deaf community
. Science and technology related to deafness (more focused in DC)
There are some others but you have a general idea of what to expect.

In DC, it is a pretty chillax subject. You have a single 1 hour lecture along with a 2 hour tutorial a week. So those of you who want a relatively spacious time table, consider doing this subject in semester. AVC is an intensive subject that runs throughout the week (Monday to Friday). You would expect a day to look like:
9 am – 10 am Lecture
10:30 am – 12 pm Workshop
12:40 pm – 2:20 pm Workshop
2:20 pm – 4:00 pm Tutorial
(The workshop focused on learning how to communicate using AUSLAN while the tutorial was more of reflection on what you learnt for the day as well as time to do some of your assignments)

If you are planning doing the intensive, it may get a little tiring considering that you have assessment due at the end of the week and on Monday of the next week. Maybe it is because I lack the endurance but I felt like doing absolutely no work when I got home and so the quality of more work suffered. I would urge you to do readings as soon as possible for AVC, ideally the weekend before the intensive week starts and minimize how much you have to do during the week. Both of these subjects involve a lot of group work in the tutorials or workshop, which is something I greatly enjoyed. And I’m not sure why, but the amount of girls in these two subjects seem to greatly outnumber the guys.

Each of these subjects you have some set readings. I found that for AVC, the readings were slightly simpler as it had less scientific reports. Nonetheless, expect 10 plus pages of chunky text. Depending on the essay prompt you decide to select, each of these readings will have different levels of significance. Some you may find useful, others useless. For DC, I pretty much only used a single set reading because that was the only one which related to my topic (Noise induced hearing loss). I would advise that you look at the different essay prompts as soon as possible so that when you go through the course, you can selectively decide what you should add to your essay and what is safe to ignore. Sometimes I felt that the readings were a waste of time because none of it related to what I will be talking about; I should have just skimmed over these rather then investing effort into making summary notes. For AVC, I used the majority of the readings in my essays but I would also recommend that you should considering going beyond the set list to get top notch marks.

AVC you have 4 pieces of assessment:
. Reflection essay (1200 words)
Pretty much an essay on what you learnt through your intensive week. How has your perspective changed? You should make use of readings as well as lectures and workshops for your reference. I made the mistake of only using my readings. It is also important to talk about things in detail, rather than just skimming the surface of several different topics. Therefore you will have to balance quality vs quantity which I am still unsure of myself. For AVC I used most of the the readings as reference since I felt they may go to waste considering I have already wasted them. Rather what I should have done is add more focus to my essays and utilize the references at the end of those set readings to expand my essay in more detail.
. A play
Yeah… Remember the part where I said it is kind of like drama. Well… it is drama but you have to put on a performance based on a fairy tale for the deaf tutors. You will be utilizing the communication methods you were taught in your workshops. So you introverted Science students! Bust out of your shell and give your performance of a life time. Doesn’t have to be Oscar worthy since it isn’t marked and you will be doing it in a group. Just have fun with it. Don’t slack off either since it is a hurdle. You will have some time to plan during your week, so use that wisely.
. Practical resource (500 words)
Basically design a resource that will inform, educate or entertain a certain target audience. This can be a video, a game, a brochure, etc. If you a creative you will have a blast. If not, you may struggle like me and end up with a bland informative brochure. You also need to write a 500 word rationale and also include references in it.
. Documentation of practical learning
This was fricken BS. Since I was part of the first cohort, things weren’t explained that clearly. From what I was told, you had to present a resource that you would use to help you learn certain elements of communicating AUSLAN. They said you shouldn’t focus purely on lexicalised signs, but also on the other elements of the language (you would have went through this in the workshop). They then give you a vague word limit of 500 words where they failed to explain whether the words in your resource would be included in the word limit. They also didn’t mention how much resources you should use either. I asked whether using 2 references from a workshop and lecture was fine and lost marks for that. And this is work 20% and due on Friday of that week! I found that quite unreasonable. The entire purpose of this assignment was ridiculous in the first place. You mark me on how I learn things? What does that mean? I get 100% if I learn the way you want me to learn? Get out of here. And they decided to explain the assessment like 2 days before the assignment was due! I would think that they would explain it on the very first day to give us time to prepare considering we are there from 9 to 4 + transport, but no!

Now remember when I said AVC and DC were similar. Well for DC, one of the assignments (worth 50%) is the exact repeat of the practical resource. So if you invested ALL of your creative juices into the AVC assignment, squeeze that sponge you call a brain to gather some more because you can’t reuse your previous one. Strangely for me, I was able to come up with a better idea the second time round, probably because I had more time to think about it. I recommend you start thinking about it the first week you start this subject, because you don’t want to be like 80% of the other students who’s best idea was a bland informative brochure. I had the advantage since I already did AVC and started panicking on what to do for my resource the second week. The second assignment is your standard 2000 word essay and you are able to select from 5 or so prompts. Look at these early on in semester and decide which you would want to write about so you can see which readings is important or not. Also familiarise yourself with Google Scholar, Discovery and reading academic papers because you need 15 PLUS REFERENCES in order to get top marks! I know, I was shocked just having left Knowledge Learning Culture where I used 8. Some topics you may find you can find plenty of resources for, others not so much. I chose a topic about noise induced hearing loss so there were plenty of resources, but others weren’t as fortunate. One important piece of feedback my tutor gave me was to compare and contrast articles. So if you want top marks, consider that advice.

Personally I would recommend DC over AVC, because it was better organised, less assignments and overall less stressful. Keep in mind however I was the first cohort for AVC so there may be changes in the future from feedback. Ultimately these two subjects aim to raise your awareness about deaf people and the deaf community, which is always a good thing. I can see that this subject will make me a much more conscious person in the future. And who knows, it might be the spark to get you into learning AUSLAN, a language in sore need of help due to its dwindling numbers (apparently translators get lots of chaching but it's not about the money... kinda). Also learn a few more hand signs besides your middle finger.

EDUC20076 - No (Only two lectures were recorded).
EDUC20069 - Yes, with screen capture.

Sorry, there were quite a few and I forgot most.

No.

EDUC20076 - 2/5
EDUC20069 - 3.5/5

No.

EDUC20076 - 1x 1 hour lecture, 2x 1 hour 30 min workshop, 1x 1 hour 30 min tutorial each day for 5 days (Monday to Friday).
EDUC20069 - 1x 1 hour lecture, 1x 2 hour tutorial each week.

EDUC20076 - July, 2014
EDUC20069 - Semester 2, 2014