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Professor Brenda Brueggemann Featured in The Lantern
Brueggemann, who also holds joint appointments in the Departments of Women's Studies and Comparative Studies and coordinates the Interdisciplinary Disability Studies Program, uses CART in her classes to help herself and her students follow class discussion. As Moody explains, " CART [Computer Assisted Real-Time Transcription] is a captioning tool operated by a real-time reporter. The reporter types both Brueggemann's and her students' spoken words, which are then projected on a screen." This helps Brueggemann, who is deaf, hear students' comments, but Moody explains how Brueggemann's students also benefit from this assistive technology: for example, "'If someone sitting in the back miss[es] something another student or I say, they can just read it off the screen.'" Brueggemann explains that many students are drawn to her classes because they or someone they know has a disability. However she highlights that the communication difficulties which affect many students with disabilities also affect many students who would classify themselves as "able-bodied."
The overlap between content and form in this course of Brueggemann's is no coincidence. Using assistive technologies like CART in classes which also take disability as their theme allows Brueggemann to echo the considerations of access and ability in the format of her teaching as well as its content.
The question of who assistive technologies can serve is one that Brueggemann also discusses in some of her classes. She considers the "mainstreaming" of assistive technologies, which naturalizes them into things "ordinary" people-not just people with disabilities-use. One of the examples Brueggemann uses is text messaging, which was introduced to the deaf community as an alternative to cell phone conversation. Years later, text messaging has become a popular form of mobile communication, rivaling cell phone conversations in the breadth of its use.
One of the telling aspects of the feature-and one which suggests why The Lantern chose Brueggemann to profile-is the comments readers have posted in response to Moody's article. These comments testify to the effectiveness of Brueggemann's teaching techniques and the compelling nature of her subject matter:
"Brenda is such a great teacher and the subject matter is fascinating!"
"Brenda is an awesome teacher, and I encourage any student looking for a great class experience to try out one of her classes."
Congratulations Dr. Brueggemann, and keep up the good work!
View the Lantern feature.
