Perhaps it was serendipity when 22 years ago undergraduate James R. Mallory paired up with a deaf student in a lab class at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). As the two students became good friends, Mallory learned sign language. From there he became a tutor for deaf and hard-of-hearing students enrolled in RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) College.

This was the beginning of a career that has put Mallory at the forefront of creating educational programs to benefit the deaf and hard-of-hearing. During the 1980’s, he served 10 years as a teacher, tutor and advisor to deaf and hard-of-hearing students majoring in engineering and computer technology as those fields evolved. Today, Mallory is an RIT faculty member in NTID’s Applied Computer Technology department, and he’s pioneering cutting-edge distance learning courses in computer programming that are geared toward helping the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

NTID, one of the seven colleges of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), is the world’s first and largest technological college for deaf students. NTID represents the first concerted effort to educate large numbers of deaf students within a college campus planned principally for hearing students. Among RIT’s 13,000 full- and part-time students are nearly 1,100 deaf students from the United States and other countries.

Mallory teamed up with RIT’s distance learning program in order to offer deaf and hard-of-hearing students around the globe an anytime/anywhere and fully accredited higher education program. Distance learning at RIT takes advantage of the Internet and computer conferencing, along with other multimedia technologies, to deliver the classroom to the student’s computer. RIT has one of the most successful and well-established distance learning programs in the country. With over 5,000 enrollments and 20 years experience in distance education, RIT currently offers seven master’s degrees, three undergraduate degrees, three advanced graduate certificates and thirteen undergraduate certificates all completely online. Mallory’s is the first course developed from the beginning with deaf and hard-of-hearing students in mind.

"James Mallory has lead the way for NTID in the distance learning arena even before it became popular," says NTID Dean T. Alan Hurwitz.

"My teaching style has been to take distance learning to a more personal level, trying to create the same atmosphere that I am able to create in the traditional classroom," says Mallory, who teaches C++ programming and Visual Basic programming at a distance, as well as teaching traditional classes in industrial computer electronics and computer programming.

"The problem with teaching computer programming is that there’s so much going on simultaneously" he continues. "You have to deal with input, output, the actual code, memory allocation, how the program executes -- and it’s difficult to follow all that -- so I tried to figure out a way that I could show all this going on at the same time." He has accomplished this by adding close-captioned voice, sign language, graphics, cartoon animations and executable simulation files into his videotaped instructions that students can view at their convenience at home.

Typically a videotape will start with Mallory explaining, in close-captioned voice and sign language, how a computer program works. Then the tape will cut away to a animated cartoon character drawn in his likeness, talking and emphasizing important points; then the computer program will be displayed, animated with certain points highlighted one line at a time, showing how the program executes.

Creating the cartoon animations was a painstaking process, says Mallory. First, an artist had to draw a complete storyboard, frame-by-frame. The next step was to animate the storyboard by incorporating it into a computer-authoring tool for multimedia production. With the help of NTID’s Industrial Development and Education (ID&E) and Instructional Television (ITV) departments, Mallory had to go through "hundreds and hundreds" of frames to edit the final production.

Mallory’s also in the process of developing a Web-based model of two Visual Basic Programming classes with instructional developer Simon Ting. This course will include simplified text instruction, graphics and sample programs that can be "dumped to a student’s desktop." Additionally, he’s experimenting with incorporating digital cameras mounted onto the computers of deaf and hard-of-hearing students that will allow for video transmission over the Web. Mallory has also co-authored a C++ textbook at an easier-to-read level that he has brought into his distance learning classes.

Mallory can incorporate the technical aspects of his distance learning courses by getting assistance and guidance from RIT’s Educational Technology Center (ETC). ETC’s mission is to "create and pursue opportunities to help faculty and staff effectively incorporate technology used for teaching learning and communicating."

According to David Cronister, co-director of ETC, "faculty like Jim Mallory are eager to produce the best distance learning experiences for their students, and we make that task a reality throughout the course preparation process. We can modify the production process to best design for the needs of the students involved in distance learning. We work as a team with Distance Learning Services at RIT."

One of the challenges of teaching a technical discipline such as computer programming to the deaf and hard-of-hearing is that interpreters are usually not trained in translating the technical jargon of such courses. Because of this, deaf students attending traditional computer programming classes often miss out on the full benefits of an instructor’s lecture. With distance learning, however, such communication problems for the deaf and hard-of-hearing are eliminated, especially if they are enrolled in one of Mallory’s multimedia-enhanced courses.

"Distance learning levels the playing field for students, " says Mallory. "This means that deaf and hard-of-hearing students can now participate as readily as their hearing peers can. We are now able to expand our educational audience to include geographically remote populations who may not normally be inclined to take courses at RIT, such as geographically remote deaf and hard of hearing adults with full-time jobs and families, or single mothers."

Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, as well as their hearing colleagues, also like the unseen, non-audio nature of students communicating electronically with each other and their instructors through chat rooms and email. Students in this type of distance learning environment more freely express their opinions and knowledge because false preconceived notions and negative stereotyping are eliminated in a computerized communication where nobody physically sees or hears each other.

"As a deaf adult, distance learning courses have opened additional opportunities and avenues that have long been available to my hearing peers," wrote one deaf student who recently took Mallory’s C++ class. "Besides allowing me to focus on learning as opposed to, say, wondering how much of the essence of a teacher’s message the interpreter or note-taker has captured, distance learning provides a forum where deaf adults like me can share technical and non-technical expertise unhindered by language, negative attitudes, geography or distance. All told, distance learning gives me a fighting chance to stay current, competent and competitive in a fast-changing technological environment."

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