Unmasking educational inequalities: The impact of COVID-19 on deaf students in higher education
Lead Research Organisation:
University of the West of Scotland
Department Name: School of Education and Social Sciences
Abstract
This research project provides an examination of the impact of COVID-19 on deaf students in higher education.
Social distancing measures have had a particularly severe impact on deaf people, many of whom rely on the facial communication for access to many services and relationships with other human beings. For deaf students in higher education this is compounded by the number of support systems required to improve access and inclusion throughout their student journey.
Within this research a wide definition of deaf students is used to include those who identify as deaf, Deaf BSL users, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing.
Even before the pandemic there were significant problems. Existing research showed that 46% of deaf students did not have their support in place at the start of their course and over half of those waited more than two months to receive it (NDCS, 2019). Social distancing measures have had particularly severe impacts on deaf people (Action on Hearing Loss, 2020).
There is a gap in knowledge of:
a) the level and detail of these impacts on deaf students
b) what considerations were given to deaf students in university planning and implementation of COVID-19 regulations
c) the likely long term impact on deaf student experience and outcomes
This project aims to address all these gaps.
Although there has been significant coverage of the impact of the pandemic on higher education students, there has been a distinct lack of representation of the specific impacts on deaf students within that coverage. This is a valuable opportunity to conduct widespread research which will explore experiences in HEIs across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It will take a mixed methods approach, using both interviews and surveys to firstly gain a good understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on deaf students' HE experience and secondly to identify good practice that might help to mitigate some of these impacts in the short and longer term future provision. It will provide an insight into institutional responses to COVID-19. Institutional responses such as remote working, online teaching, facial coverings, online induction and extra-curricula activities will be explored. Deaf students' experiences of these measures will also be explored including any particular impacts on availability of human aids to communication such as interpreters, note takers, language support tutors, lip-speakers and sighted guides for deafblind people. The research will examine issues of inclusion and accessibility, in the online classroom and the wider organisations. It will examine institutional planning and responsiveness in the short, medium and longer term, but also in relation to future practices aimed at mitigating disadvantages experienced by deaf students so far. The research seeks to make recommendations for supporting current students in the remaining part of their studies. Given the current calls to re-think HE provision (Hack, 2020), the project team will also work in collaboration with students, support providers and HEIs in order to make best practice recommendations that enhancing remote learning provision for deaf students.
The research also adds a valuable contribution to the work being done by disabled students organisations and the national Disabled Student's Commission with its focus on the challenges in responding to the pandemic whilst ensuring disabled students are adequately supported. The research is supported by National Deaf Children's Society and builds on their ongoing work to raise awareness of existing communication barriers made worse by the pandemic. In providing recommendations on best practice in teaching deaf students online it has relevance to the current review of digital teaching and learning being conducted by the Office for Students, and the work of Advance HE and other organisations looking at the future shape of higher education post pandemic.
Social distancing measures have had a particularly severe impact on deaf people, many of whom rely on the facial communication for access to many services and relationships with other human beings. For deaf students in higher education this is compounded by the number of support systems required to improve access and inclusion throughout their student journey.
Within this research a wide definition of deaf students is used to include those who identify as deaf, Deaf BSL users, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing.
Even before the pandemic there were significant problems. Existing research showed that 46% of deaf students did not have their support in place at the start of their course and over half of those waited more than two months to receive it (NDCS, 2019). Social distancing measures have had particularly severe impacts on deaf people (Action on Hearing Loss, 2020).
There is a gap in knowledge of:
a) the level and detail of these impacts on deaf students
b) what considerations were given to deaf students in university planning and implementation of COVID-19 regulations
c) the likely long term impact on deaf student experience and outcomes
This project aims to address all these gaps.
Although there has been significant coverage of the impact of the pandemic on higher education students, there has been a distinct lack of representation of the specific impacts on deaf students within that coverage. This is a valuable opportunity to conduct widespread research which will explore experiences in HEIs across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It will take a mixed methods approach, using both interviews and surveys to firstly gain a good understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on deaf students' HE experience and secondly to identify good practice that might help to mitigate some of these impacts in the short and longer term future provision. It will provide an insight into institutional responses to COVID-19. Institutional responses such as remote working, online teaching, facial coverings, online induction and extra-curricula activities will be explored. Deaf students' experiences of these measures will also be explored including any particular impacts on availability of human aids to communication such as interpreters, note takers, language support tutors, lip-speakers and sighted guides for deafblind people. The research will examine issues of inclusion and accessibility, in the online classroom and the wider organisations. It will examine institutional planning and responsiveness in the short, medium and longer term, but also in relation to future practices aimed at mitigating disadvantages experienced by deaf students so far. The research seeks to make recommendations for supporting current students in the remaining part of their studies. Given the current calls to re-think HE provision (Hack, 2020), the project team will also work in collaboration with students, support providers and HEIs in order to make best practice recommendations that enhancing remote learning provision for deaf students.
The research also adds a valuable contribution to the work being done by disabled students organisations and the national Disabled Student's Commission with its focus on the challenges in responding to the pandemic whilst ensuring disabled students are adequately supported. The research is supported by National Deaf Children's Society and builds on their ongoing work to raise awareness of existing communication barriers made worse by the pandemic. In providing recommendations on best practice in teaching deaf students online it has relevance to the current review of digital teaching and learning being conducted by the Office for Students, and the work of Advance HE and other organisations looking at the future shape of higher education post pandemic.
| Description | Please note that these refer to preliminary and snap shot findings as the final analyses have not been completed. This is due to the staff changes on the project. The project was written with 4 staff members at the original university UWS but all four members of staff had left by the end of the project so an agreement was made between UWS and the PI's new university to complete the project with the PI as the only remaining member of the team, this has led to delays in the final analysis and write up. The findings relate tod different areas of experience during the pandemic: Academics and managers experiences, deaf student experiences, and the experiences of those who work in different access and inclusion support roles in higher education working with deaf students. Data from senior managers was sparse but what came through was at the initial stages of the pandemic senior managers were considering the emergency responses required across all their campuses including those global campuses. There were no specific considerations for deaf students beyond the broader area of disability and several justifications were put forward for this including interestingly, parity and finances. There were different approaches to consultation about decision to be made, for some this was an important element within the initial phases and significant attempts were made to consult as widely as they could but for others the approach was that the decisions has be be made and it was more a matter of making decisions in an emergency and communicating those decisions was more important. There was generally no consideration given to mitigation for deaf students who had been disadvantaged during the pandemic. For students there were key findings around the burden of access being placed on their shoulders rather than the third party disability staff. It was often the responsibility of deaf students to ensure that their interpreter or notetaker had the correct information that they needed to access the lesson. There were significant issues around barriers to access in the online learning environment especially in the area of captioning. Automatic captioning was generally used by lecturing staff but the level of errors within this created a barriers to access for students and this was often not recognised by the academics teaching them. For academics there was the issue about the time allocations for making the online sessions accessible. This was not something that was generally written into workloads of academics. Academics for the most part although not in all cases, they had suddenly gone to teaching online and this was not with the appropriate level of support. Students felt they had been negatively affected by the pandemic in terms of different forms of fatigue (screen fatigue, eye fatigue, hearing fatigue) grades, poorer mental health, and the need to access more support than previously to the pandemic. Access and inclusion staff had many issues with the online environment and this caused many barriers to enabling them to carry out their role in supporting deaf students. Some of these issues included being sent to different breakout rooms than the student they were working with, not being given information about the session or changes to the session including last minute changes to schedule and also not being granted access to online sessions because they did not have a university email address. Although these issues affected the staff the focus of the findings is on the impact his has on the deaf students. This often resulted in a total or temporary lack of access for the students. |
| Exploitation Route | Initial findings have already been useful to others as preliminary findings were shared during the events online and in person. These events were evaluated well and included confirmation of the ways in which the workshop will help to improve practice in their HEI |
| Sectors | Education |
| Description | They have contributed to practice as this participants from the research have identified ways in which this will improve their practice. The research has also been of benefit to deaf student consultants who have been able to benefit from designing and delivering workshops and have had the opportunity to develop their presentations skills to a wide range of professionals this has provided an enhancement to their CVs and employability skills. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Education,Other |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | best practice workshops and events |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Article for online deaf blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was an article we wrote about the research project and the pilot and it was also used as a recruitment tool for participants during the data collection. It is impossible to measure the impact of this as the reach is international so it is not clear how much traffic was directed our way because of this. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://limpingchicken.com/2022/04/21/research-deaf-university-students-struggles-and-benefits-from-... |
| Description | Best practice workshops for HEIs |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We delivered an online workshop with universities across the UK. This second workshop was mainly for university staff. The workshop was co-designed and co-delivered with students that we had recruited as consultants on the project. The workshop was evaluated and participants were asked how the workshop would help them to improve their practice. The participants were able to pick out key areas for improvements of their practice or that they would report back to senior managers to try to implement change. In addition to the impact for the university staff there was also significant impact in terms of student experiences for the students who were delivering the workshop. They were able to gain significant experiences that will be helpful in terms of their career development. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://deafcovidhe.com/ |
| Description | Delivery of best practice workshops to HEIs |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We delivered an online workshop with universities across the UK. This first workshop was mainly for university staff. The workshop was co-designed and co-delivered with students that we had recruited as consultants on the project. The workshop was evaluated and participants were asked how the workshop would help them to improve their practice. The participants were able to pick out key areas for improvements of their practice or that they would report back to senior managers to try to implement change. In addition to the impact for the university staff there was also significant impact in terms of student experiences for the students who were delivering the workshop. They were able to gain significant experiences that will be helpful in terms of their career development. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://deafcovidhe.com/ |
| Description | Face to face .end of project event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was the final event of the project. It was a closing event for the entire project. This was an opportunity to share the background to the research, some key findings, dissemination so far and further publications. In addition tot he focus on the research, there was a final workshop and this was led by the students. There was also a range of other presentations focused on disability and higher education. This included a presentation on deaf education, race and disability in higher education, disabled students UK and their research with disabled students, an example from Cardiff Met university and the work they are doing on raising the profile of deaf students in their university, a deaf student who was not originally part of the student consultant groups approached me to see if she could join in. The student took up the offer of doing a presentation instead and ended up giving a very powerful presentation about her experiences of being a deaf student. It was as if to bring the research to life and was an excellent presentation that generated a lot of discussion about how to move things forward to bring about improvements in deaf student experiences. The final presentation was deaf poetry from one of the student consultants. The event was another great opportunity for the students to develop there presentations skills, workshop design and communication skills and other useful employability skills. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://deafcovidhe.com/ |
| Description | Face to face best practice workshop on how to work with deaf students |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was the first face to face workshop that we delivered. While the other two events had been purely deaf student led workshops, this was a half day event that combined some initial feedback from the research with the best practice workshop. There was more discussion built into this session and more networking opportunities. From the start of the research we have been supported by NDCS National Deaf Children's Society and within this workshop there was a representative from NDCS there. This event was also aimed primarily at university staff but it was also aimed at students as well. There were both postgraduate and undergraduate students. Again there were evaluations built in and this was evaluated very well. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://deafcovidhe.com/ |
| Description | International conference presentation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We presented a paper at an international conference on language rights. This was a presentation about the research and findings from the pilot study and early data collection. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Project website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | We have created a project website this is to publicise the research as well as a recruitment tool |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | http://deafcovidhe.uws.ac.uk |