ASL High School Curriculum, credits, and hours

Understanding Semester Units:
(why classes meet for the amount of time they do)

A "unit" or a "credit" is based on the number of hours of instruction per week required in the classroom (and/or lab or independent study). A course earning one semester unit will usually meet one hour a week. A course earning three semester units will usually meet three hours a week.

Here is the "tricky" part: One "classroom contact hour" is considered to consist of 50 minutes of actual instruction (so as to allow for a 10 minute break).
So a three unit class needs to have 150 minutes of actual instruction time (3 times 50 = 150) each week.

But you have to take "breaks" into account.
A three unit course that meets once a week would meet from 6 to 8:50 pm which is 170 minutes.
A three unit course that meets twice a week would meet from 6 to 7:15 pm which is a total of 150 minutes.
WHAT? Why does the once a week course contain 20 extra minutes?
It is because a three-hour once-a-week course will typically have two breaks of 10 minutes each. (2 times 10 = 20 extra minutes).
A three-hour twice-a-week course breaks the seat-time (150 minutes) into two parts. If you break the 150 minutes in half (by meeting twice a week) it is reasonable to teach 75 minutes without a break so there is no need to take a break during a 3-unit twice-a-week class. But it is VERY important to take breaks during a 3 unit once a week class.
So a teacher teaching a 3 hour once-a-week class will end up investing an extra 300 minutes (20 minutes of breaks per class times 15 weeks = 300 minutes) more time than a teacher teaching a twice a week class -- because of those breaks. So, a person might think that the once a week instructor is getting a bad deal!?! Not so fast. Hold on. Did we forget travel time? The twice a week instructor has to travel back and forth to teach class an extra 15 times per semester and thus when you factor in drive time, gas, wear and tear on the vehicle, etc. suddenly it is clear that if the twice a week instructor is making an extra trip for that one class then he or she is actually investing more total time than the once a week instructor.
Now let's consider a 4 unit class. 4 x 50 = 200 total minutes per week of instruction.
If that class met two days a week that would be 100 minutes per day. Such a class would meet from 6 to 7:50 for a total of 110 minutes (100 minutes of instruction and 10 minutes of break time).

Topic: college credit vs high school credit.

If you look at actual classroom contact hours, one year of high school is the equivalent of 4 semesters of college at 3-units per semester. I know that sounds crazy, but consider the numbers: A typical high school year consists of 180 school days. 180 days multiplied by an hour a day comes to a hundred and eighty hours. A typical college class consists of only 3 hours per week times 15 or 16 weeks (depending on the college). That would be 45 to 48 contact hours. Thus it would take four semesters of college to equal the actual classroom contact hours of a one-year high school course.

The question to be answered is: Suppose a student takes a college ASL course via early enrollment. What amount of high school credit is a 3-semester-credit-hour college course worth?

In general my research is showing that a 3-semester-credit-hour college course is the equivalent of point five (.5) credits of high school credit. (Which is to say "half a credit.")

Comments?

High School Credit: According to Florida statutes, a class must consist of 75 hours to meet a semester requirement (including study and class time), or 130 hours to qualify for a year credit. (2 college semesters count as 4 high school semesters) that would be equivalent to 2 years of foreign language.)

> In a message dated 4/29/2004 1:46:42 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
> rmlgraham@ writes:
home schooled and going into 9th grade. So over the summer I
> will > be doing ASL 1 and most of ASL 2. Because the classes are college
> level, > (2 college semesters count as 4 high school semesters) that would be
> equivalent to 2 years of foreign language. Thanks so much for replying. > If you have any other questions please e-mail me.

Hello Bill,
Thank you for the reply...Of course I'd tell you everything about myself. I am Deaf. I love teaching high school in
ASL. I am a mother of two. My girl, Mia is now 2 (hearing, first language is ASL but is now taking speech therapy hee hee) and the
second one, Michael, just turned 4 months old. Hearing too. Sleeps a lot. :) My husband Michael is an ASL interpreter but he is the director
for the Deaf and Blind at Teacher's College, Columbia University.
Right now I am teaching ASL Level One using both Vista and ABC Basic Book to high school grade 9th through 12th. I am working at Port
Washington High School (Long Island, NY) and for this coming fall, I will be transferred to another school and will be teaching ASL at
Jericho High School.

I strongly feel that your lessons on website were more effective and meets the students' skills/interests. They also go on your online for
their receptive skills on signing. They all enjoy it very much.

I will be meeting my chairperson on Thursday to discuss the next year's schedule. I will be more than happy to provide the information
as soon as I get the information from her.

In the meantime, I am teaching ASL classes as credit courses at Nassau Community College and continuing Education at Hofstra University. I
even mentioned all of my students about your website too. You are getting popular! :)

Right now at Port Washington High School, I teach ASL 1 once a day. It is a part time job. I was told that there was a budget cut meaning
there is no ASL classes for next year (**pretty upset about it but that is not a definite as of yet**) As I started to research on the New York
State Regents Examination for High School in ASL, it is a pretty intenstive exam and according to them, they use VISTA 1 and 2. I
strongly feel that the VISTA are somewhat too advanced for high school. I feel that VISTA should be used in colleges/universities.

I'd be more than happy to correspond with you in giving you ideas for designing the curriculum. I will think of more and write down my ideas
and share it with you. The only thing I am very interested is having a teacher's version of ASL with supported materials such as tests,
overhead, worksheets, research papers, projects and so on. Oh, I am doing the activity with my class right now, my students are
researching on famous Deaf people such as Gallaudet, Clerc, Linda Bove and so on. They are to do 2 pages research on their background and
design a poster with 4 or more pictures and add timeline on it from the day they were born, what did they do to accomplish their careers and so
on and will be displayed on the walls at the high school main area. Students find it amazing because they had no idea that the Hulk was
hard of hearing. Last, students are to sign about their projects and what they have learned. It is a fun project to do. My students are much
of hands on projects. I'd like more hands on projects and more games too. I can't think of any more. I could go on and on but I'll stop for
now.

Thanks again,
Leah Canale

Leah Canale
ASL Instructor
Hofstra University
University College of Continuing Education
250 Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549-2000

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Bill Vicars
> Date: April 27, 2004 1:21:43 PM EDT
> To: mcanale@
> Subject: Re: ASL
>
> Leah,
> ... If you'll tell me as much as you can about the nature of what you do
> and what you need in regard to an effective high school ASL
> curriculum--I might soon be in a position to custom design such a
> curriculum.
> I'd like complete contact and career data from you:
> name, phone, email, mailing address, school where you teach, number of
> courses, title of course, credit granted, contact hours per course,
> levels available or desired, current curriculum, and what you think
> would be the "dream" curriculum for a high school class. How many
> lessons, what kind of supports, what would the text be like, etc.
>
> William Vicars, Ed.D.
> Asst. Professor, American Sign Language
> Eureka Hall, Room 308
> California State University, Sacramento
> 6000 J Street
> Sacramento CA 95819-6079
>
> In a message dated 4/27/2004 5:01:23 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> mcanale@ writes:
> Hello Bill,
>> Your website at Lifeprint.com is amazing! I've been teaching my
> high school with some of your lessons and they were more than motivated to
> learn ASL. In preparing for next year's ASL lesson plans, I'd like to
> check with you first before purchasing the set that comes with a book
> and CDs. I am concerned about the CD version. I noticed that you
> printed that the CDs are formatted for Windows/PC versions. The
> problem
> is we use Macintosh computers. Right now I am using Apple G3 powerbook
> with Mac OS X version. I do have Windows Media Player installed. Will
> your CDs work on my Macintosh powerbook? This computer is connected to
> the classroom equipments such as overhead and screen.
>
> I'd appreciate your suggestions/comments.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Leah Canale

Bill

Carnegie Unit:

Definition (according to the Carnegie Foundation),
<<The unit was developed in 1906 as a measure of the amount of time a student has studied a subject. For example, a total of 120 hours in one subject -- meeting 4 or 5 times a week for 40 to 60 minutes, for 36 to 40 weeks each year -- earns the student one "unit" of high school credit. Fourteen units were deemed to constitute the minimum amount of preparation that may be interpreted as "four years of academic or high school preparation".>>

Note this next entry is also filed under "equivalency."

In a message dated 11/29/2006 11:09:40 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, an ASL program coordinator writes:
Out of curiosity, how do you guarantee or verify that students are actually spending those contact hours online (1 hr vs. 5 min. of actual online time, say)?
-- Curious.

Dear Curious,
I've found there are several defensible approaches to the topic of class time equivalency.
The most impressive approach I know of is to use an online timer combined with random identity testing. I've seen this done for "drivers education" courses wherein the program at random intervals requires the student to input personally identifiable data. And since the program was connected to the state drivers license bureau it was able to draw upon some serious data. For example, "What is your drivers license number?" "Which of the following was one of your addresses?" "What year were you born?" "Which insurance company do you use for your automobile insurance."
Such questions are likely to trip up someone "sitting in" for a student.
I would reckon such a system cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement. I can only imagine the work hours and levels of approval that course went through to become reality.
Such an approach is beyond the reach of many instructors, but is becoming more and more possible by using Course Management Software (CMS) such as Blackboard, E-college, or Breeze. Such programs can actually track time spent online per student. Thus enabling the instructor to see if the student was logged in for the required amount of time.

Another approach, (one which I'm pursuing) is to work backward from the expected course outcomes. For example how does a college decide to allocate 3 credit hours to a language course? Why are some courses worth 5 credit hours and others worth 3 credits. Such determinations can be made by using statistical averages and applying them to the presentation times. Which is to say, on average it takes a certain amount of time to teach a certain amount of material. How do you know if you have successfully taught the material? Traditionally this is determined via testing.

We are not considering instructional methodology at this point. The question at hand has nothing to do with any of the dozens of popular or once popular methodologies such as: Direct, Grammar-Translation, Reading, Audiolingual, Community Language Learning, Functional-Notional, Total Physical Response, etc. The question we are addressing is how long, on average does it take to introduce 15 concepts. Note: a lexical concept (vocabulary word) has not been fully introduced until a student understands the grammatical, cultural, and pragmatic aspects related to that concept. Thus knowing a sign is not the same as knowing how to use a sign according to the grammar of the language and the conventions of the community to which that language is affiliated.

For example, we may determine on average it takes approximately an hour to:
* Welcome students
* Make announcements
* Take care of relevant business: passing back papers, distributing handouts, etc.
* Review 15 previously learned concepts
* Introduce 15 new concepts
* Introduce the grammatical, pragmatic, and cultural aspects of those concepts
* Reinforce the new concepts
* Provide time for student practicing of the concepts
* Provide corrective and positive feedback
* Answer questions
* Review the 15 new concepts
* Set expectations for the next course period
* Assign and clarify homework
* Dismiss class

Thus it is defensible to state that it takes approximately of 4 minutes of classroom time per �grammatically informed� lexical item. By grammatically informed I mean the sign and the knowledge of how to use that sign.
We can say that it takes 4 minutes of classroom time to teach a student a sign and how to appropriately use that sign in grammatically correct fashion in a conversation. It is not enough for a student to internalize a list of signs. The student must also learn how to use those signs according to convention.

Once we determine how long it takes to learn a thing we can then use multiplication to determine how long it takes to learn a group of things. If the average student learns one sign or general concept per four minutes, then the average student will learn 15 signs in an hour and 150 signs in 10 hours, 300 signs in 20 hours, 600 signs in 40 hours, and so forth. A 45 contact hour class, using that rate of acquisition would cover 675 lexical concepts.

Next we need to take into account a number of factors that impact the rate of sign acquisition.
When you consider the workings of the human brain it is generally accepted as fact that as the amount of learned information increases, so does the need for additional review time to maintain that learning.

Additionally we need to consider that in most in-person classroom environments there are individuals who are less capable than the rest of the students and these individuals tend to slow the progress of the class.

It is also not uncommon for many college-level classroom instructors on test days to give the test and then dismiss the class even though technically there is time remaining on the clock. Whether appropriate or not, it occurs and must be accounted for when considering, �Where does the time go?�

The list of factors that �eat into� instructional time could go on at length, but let�s move on after one more example: Many instructors take a full day of class to hand out their syllabus and explain its contents to students. When comparing this to �time spent online� how does one account for the hour a student takes reading a syllabus, emailing the instructor for clarification of various items, and then reading the response? How do we account for the teaching time of the instructor who takes 15 minutes each to type out a response to 10 different emailed questions from students? Does that 150 minutes of the teacher�s time count toward �class time?� What if the teacher�s responses are posted to a �class bulletin board� or submitted to a class listserv?

Obviously a lot goes on in both in-person classes and online classes that does not directly contribute toward acquisition of topic-related knowledge. Thus we see our initial determination of 675 lexical concepts is in fact only an �ideal� and must be adjusted downward to more appropriately reflect typical expected learning outcomes. Again, statistics based on experience might indicate that a more typical amount of lexical concepts (and the attending grammatical, cultural, and pragmatic information) would be in the range of 400 per 3 credit hour course. Active, awake, motivated students might conceivably complete such a course having learned a great deal more signs. Students on the other end of the spectrum might complete the course having learned only 60% of the targeted signs (including, the appropriate grammatical, cultural, and pragmatic information), or 240 signs�worthy of a �D minus.� But we are dealing with averages here rather than extremes so let us simply state that a student successfully completing a 3 credit hour class will be able to demonstrate and recognize approximately 400 signs (including, of course, the appropriate grammatical, cultural, and pragmatic information related to those signs.)

Why do I repeat the instructions �culturally, grammatically, and pragmatically correct?� Because there are those who will see the words �400 signs� and become blind for the rest of the sentence. I�m not talking about lists of words here--I�m talking about units of measurement that are embedded in discourse level sentences, paragraphs, and conversations. Students are learning to engage in discourse. The testing I�m referring to is discourse level testing: Recognition of whole sentences, appreciation of pragmatic nuances, and selection of appropriate grammar. The signs I�m referring to do not exist in isolation from their linguistic conventions. The percentages I�m referring to here require that signs not only be presented, but that they be presented in grammatically correct ways at the discourse level of communication.

Seat time becomes irrelevant at this point and the only real consideration is, �Can a student demonstrate and recognize a certain number of signs (in a culturally, grammatically, and pragmatically correct fashion)?� If so, then it is defensible that the student has completed an amount of study equivalent to that of a 3 credit hour college-level ASL course.

Cordially,
Bill Vicars

A high school principal asked how many "credits" my upcoming "Level 3 course" will be.

My response:
The course will be the equivalent of a four-credit-hour 1-semester college course. I will be using a clone of the course to teach ASL 3 at California State University - Sacramento (which carries 4 semester-credit-hours).
Some high schools consider a semester college course to be the equivalent of a 1-year high school course.
Since my courses are offered via distance education and some students work faster than others--the actual contact hours will vary. What I do is document that the student has completed the course and has demonstrated (via testing and submission of assignments) competence in the topic equivalent to that which is typically expected of a student to pass a 4-credit-hour level-3 ASL college course.
Your own school can certainly choose to interpret that as the equivalent of 1 Unit of High School Credit.

American Sign Language:

Credit: