1.5 Research

To find out what the challenges of online teaching were for sign language teachers across Europe, an online survey was developed and posted on the website and the Facebook page of the project. 

The survey was in written English. This may have made it difficult for many of our target group to answer the questions. Adding International Sign translations to the survey was discussed, but rejected. Both the questions and the answers would have to be translated, which would make the survey more time consuming. Instead, we tried to make the questions easy to read and respond to. We also produced an introduction in International Sign. In the introduction (English text and International Sign) we explained that, for the open questions, teachers could use their own national language or send us a link to a signed answer. 

The survey questions focused on the main challenges and questions that the sign language teachers in the consortium had to deal with during the lockdowns.

The questions and the raw data of the survey can be found in Annex 1. Chapter 3 summarises the main results. 

In addition, the literature was studied to find research about the challenges of teaching online during the pandemic. During the lifetime of the project (2021 - 2023), very little research was published about teaching signed languages online. There were some older studies about the effectiveness of e-learning for signed languages. In most cases, these studies focused on students who used online courses or training materials, independently.

We also looked at studies of online teaching of spoken languages.