Miss-Delectable
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The Lantern - Deaf professor teaches English
Even though she is deaf, Ohio State professor Brenda Brueggemann uses her disability as a tool to break down communication barriers between her students.
Brueggemann, a professor in the department of English, has taught at OSU for 16 years.
She teaches students from all areas of study, though most students in her English 597 class are there because they have a disability or know someone with a disability, she said.
Brueggemann said disabilities are all about relationships. A person does not have to be physically or mentally disabled to experience some difficulty in communicating with other people.
Her approach is all about making communication transparent. At the beginning of each quarter she explains her disability, which takes the pressure off her students. Students feel more inclined to communicate and participate in discussion, Brueggemann said.
Brueggemann uses a method called multimodal teaching. Multimodal teaching simultaneously combines lecture, group discussion and electronic presentations to reach students, she said.
“When you mix things up, it ends up helping everyone,” she said.
“Because of the way students multitask in their everyday lives, they can keep up with everything that’s going on in the classroom.
“I’ve had other professors sit in on my classes, and they end up being mentally exhausted from all the stimulation.”
Brueggemann’s most important tool is her Computer Assisted Real-Time Transcription (CART) device. CART is a captioning tool operated by a real-time reporter. The reporter types both Brueggemann’s and her students’ spoken words, which are then projected on a screen.
Brueggemann said she uses CART as an anchor. She begins to see what a student is saying, and uses that cue to follow along with their discussion. She said she also reads lips to fill in the blanks while listening to discussions.
CART is not only beneficial for Brueggemann, but for her students as well. “If someone sitting in the back miss[es] something another student or I say, they can just read it off the screen,’ she said.
After a while, students do not notice the CART system as being different, Brueggemann said. They quickly adapt and use it like any other learning tool in the classroom, she said.
In the time Brueggemann has been at OSU, she has developed the disability studies minor, started American Sign Language classes and has been published numerous times.
She continually experiments with different approaches to get students to communicate with one another and better understand the disabled community.
Even though she is deaf, Ohio State professor Brenda Brueggemann uses her disability as a tool to break down communication barriers between her students.
Brueggemann, a professor in the department of English, has taught at OSU for 16 years.
She teaches students from all areas of study, though most students in her English 597 class are there because they have a disability or know someone with a disability, she said.
Brueggemann said disabilities are all about relationships. A person does not have to be physically or mentally disabled to experience some difficulty in communicating with other people.
Her approach is all about making communication transparent. At the beginning of each quarter she explains her disability, which takes the pressure off her students. Students feel more inclined to communicate and participate in discussion, Brueggemann said.
Brueggemann uses a method called multimodal teaching. Multimodal teaching simultaneously combines lecture, group discussion and electronic presentations to reach students, she said.
“When you mix things up, it ends up helping everyone,” she said.
“Because of the way students multitask in their everyday lives, they can keep up with everything that’s going on in the classroom.
“I’ve had other professors sit in on my classes, and they end up being mentally exhausted from all the stimulation.”
Brueggemann’s most important tool is her Computer Assisted Real-Time Transcription (CART) device. CART is a captioning tool operated by a real-time reporter. The reporter types both Brueggemann’s and her students’ spoken words, which are then projected on a screen.
Brueggemann said she uses CART as an anchor. She begins to see what a student is saying, and uses that cue to follow along with their discussion. She said she also reads lips to fill in the blanks while listening to discussions.
CART is not only beneficial for Brueggemann, but for her students as well. “If someone sitting in the back miss[es] something another student or I say, they can just read it off the screen,’ she said.
After a while, students do not notice the CART system as being different, Brueggemann said. They quickly adapt and use it like any other learning tool in the classroom, she said.
In the time Brueggemann has been at OSU, she has developed the disability studies minor, started American Sign Language classes and has been published numerous times.
She continually experiments with different approaches to get students to communicate with one another and better understand the disabled community.
! Also, her children are hearing and her family are hearing as well. OSU is not a deaf school like Gallaudet so I'm sure she uses it far less here.