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. 2021 Feb 9;99(1):122-128.
doi: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c01368. eCollection 2022 Jan 11.

Sign Language Incorporation in Chemistry Education (SLICE): Building a Lexicon to Support the Understanding of Organic Chemistry

Kaitlyn Clark  1 , Asma Sheikh  1 , Jennifer Swartzenberg  1 , Ashley Gleason  1 , Cody Cummings  1 , Jonathan Dominguez  1 , Michelle Mailhot  1 , Christina Goudreau Collison  1
Affiliations

Sign Language Incorporation in Chemistry Education (SLICE): Building a Lexicon to Support the Understanding of Organic Chemistry

Kaitlyn Clark et al. J Chem Educ. .

Abstract

Historically, deaf and hard-of-hearing students (D/HH) who solely rely on an interpreter during organic chemistry lecture courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology consistently performed below the average in the class. A barrier attributed to this D/HH student performance is the lack of standardized methods in sign language to effectively communicate the organic chemistry terminology. As such, our group worked to address this challenge through a deliberate effort to develop a lexicon of insightful signs/classifiers that convey organic chemistry vocabulary as well as descriptive expansions to demonstrate challenging concepts. We will share our remarkable findings after the signs were developed and implemented, and the implications sign language incorporation in education could have on how we teach all students enrolled in STEM disciplines in the future.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Method for signing the concept of steric hindrance using facial cues to denote a large steric interaction with the rationale for the chosen steric interaction handshape as denoted by the widely used overlapping parentheses. Panel a denotes the starting point of the signer’s hands, and panel b indicates the direction of movement and final position of the signer’s hands.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Descriptive sign showing the sign for “anticoplanar”.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Syn-3 transition state sign language expansions for the formation of the brominium bridge for both the top face approach or bottom face approach relative to the alkene.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Sample of reaction transition states that can be categorized as a syn-3 addition reaction of an alkene. The transition states for bromination, oxymercuration, and epoxidation are shown, respectively.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Sample of transition states that can be categorized as a syn-4 addition reaction of an alkene. The transition states for hydroboration, hydrogenation, and dihydroxylaton are shown, respectively.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Final grade averages (%) by academic cohort in the first semester of organic chemistry for hearing students and D/HH students requiring an interpreter in the same course. P-Values are denoted using *<0.05, **<0.01, ***<0.005.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Averages (%) by academic cohort for exam 4 given at the end of the first semester of organic chemistry for hearing students and D/HH students requiring an interpreter in the same course. P-Values are denoted using *<0.05, **<0.01, ***<0.005.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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