Pace

The #1 complaint that both hearing and Deaf/HH students have is that their instructor’s pace is too fast.

For Deaf/HH students in particular, new concepts and new vocabulary can be introduced so quickly that the interpreter/captionist has trouble keeping up and the Deaf/HH student ends up missing valuable information. Consider these strategies:

• Try to slow down. That will allow all of the students in your class to fully understand and process your presentations
  
• The most important thing you can do to reduce your pace of instruction is to reduce the amount of material covered in class. There are at least two approaches to accomplish this:
  
  1. Try reducing the overall material covered in the course. Could you accomplish your goals for the course with fewer readings, examples, activities, discussion question, or topics? Could you give one example instead of two?   Would reading two articles on a topic develop the same skill set as three?
     
  2. Present some course materials in alternate formats, such as group word, reading assignments, or online learning activities.

• Some other strategies for slowing your pace are:
  • Check often with students, and with the interpreter/captionist, to make sure that they are able to keep up with your lecture.
  • Make sure to pause before changing topics.
  • Write important words and formulas on the board and do not continue lecturing until you have finished writing.
  • After asking a question of the class, make sure the question has been fully interpreted and then pause to make sure that the Deaf/HH students have had a chance to answer before calling on students.
  • Make sure that students have time to read each presentation slide before you begin to talk about it. To help, place our Pacerspacer on all of your presentation slides..

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