The COVID-19 pandemic completely disrupted higher education. University education is typically associated with in-person lectures, labs, discussions, and on-campus resources; now, most activities are held virtually via online conference tools like Zoom. This new online environment comes with challenges of fatigue, noise and visual distractions, and COVID-related stressors (Hurst, 2020; J. Skylar, 2020). For many students, attention spans and motivation are significant inhibitors for learning (Fay et al., 2020; Guo et al., 2014). For students who are hard-of-hearing, however, functioning in this online environment may prove to be an even more demanding task. Approximately 48 million Americans have some level of hearing loss (HLAA_HearingLoss_Facts_Statistics.Pdf, n.d.), which can impact many aspects of a person’s life, including school. Students who are hard-of-hearing (HH) may not hear or understand up to 50% of a lecture (HLAA_HearingLoss_Facts_Statistics.Pdf, n.d.). Given these challenges, how can we accommodate the needs of hard-of-hearing students in online classes? This thesis provides Zoom guidelines and videos for effective online instruction to accommodate students who are hard-of-hearing.
