Next gen leaders

Empowering caregivers

Students conduct research and improve language outcomes for children in UGA’s Child Communication Lab

Students interested in investigating and understanding child language disorders are putting their passion into practice. 

Housed in the UGA Mary Frances Early College of Education, the Child Communication Lab (CCL) is a collaborative research hub led by Jennifer Brown, associate professor and graduate coordinator in the Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education.

The lab offers students at various stages of their college careers the opportunity to not only conduct and analyze research, but to apply what they’ve learned through their research studies into real-world practice.

“When people think about research to practice, they'll say that there's a gap,” says Brown. “We need what people are doing in early intervention to be informing our research, and our research needs to be examining things that are doable for early intervention providers.”

Established in 2018, the CCL helps close this gap by integrating research, practice, and professional development to improve communication outcomes for children with identified language disorders or a likelihood for language disorders, as well as children developing language typically.

Undergraduate students interested in research can take a directed course with Brown, who guides and oversees their work on various research projects, several of which are funded by external grants. These projects often change from semester to semester and are dependent on the research study’s progress.

For example, students may focus on collecting data one semester, while another group of students pick up where the last group left off and analyze that data the next semester. However, all are focused on research that examines and enhances collaborative practices involving parents, caregivers, and teachers, in natural environments, such as the home, community, or school.

“I opened the lab up to undergraduate students who are interested in learning more about research and early communication with young children—infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and occasionally early school-age children,” says Brown. “We’re looking at exploring ways to improve young children's communication.”

What helps children learn language?

Some of the lab’s ongoing research, practice, and professional development projects include:

• Embedded intervention strategies and caregiver coaching
• Influence of materials, routines, and activities on parent-toddler communication
• Scholarship of teaching and learning related to communication sciences and disorders
• Interprofessional education and practice

Brown and her research team have several published papers and presentations covering these topics, including one focused on how different types of toys influence parent communication.

The team’s findings suggest that electronic toys may be less educational than traditional toys like puzzles, blocks, cars, books, and more, for young children. Specifically, electronic toys marketed as educational often lack the back-and-forth language interaction that researchers and practitioners know supports foundational language outcomes in young children.

“That difference doesn’t mean that if a child enjoys playing with those toys that those choices are wrong or bad,” says Brown. “But the toys may not be meeting the goal that they're being marketed to achieve, which is where the concern comes in because parents are thinking they're doing what's best for their child and buying the thing that’s going to help them learn.”

CCL students—which include undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students—also learn about family-guided routines-based intervention, which is a framework for early interventionists coaching caregivers on how to engage their children in learning as they participate in everyday routines and activities.

“The collaborative natural environment focus of our work is unique,” says Brown. “We are collaborating with and coaching parents, extended family members, preschool teachers—whoever is in that broader category of caregivers—because those are the people who spend time with kids throughout the day. We can leverage the knowledge we have as interventionists by supporting these people.”

What the future holds

Brooke Apple (B.S.Ed. ’23, M.A. ’25) and Madison St. Clair Statham (B.S.Ed. ’23, M.A. ’25) joined the Child Communication Lab as undergraduate students.

Today, they’re conducting research with Brown as master’s students in the College’s communication sciences and disorders program.

As undergraduate students, Apple and Statham conducted research on parent-child communication and coded data to analyze the words parents and children use when playing with different types of toys. They presented their findings at UGA’s spring 2023 Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) Symposium.

“Working with Dr. Brown and learning from her expertise furthered my knowledge of the research process and helped me better understand why research is so vital to our profession,” says St. Clair. “One of my goals over the next two years of my graduate program is to become a clinician who implements evidence-based practice to best serve my clients.”

The pair’s CURO project investigated content-specific words parents and children use when playing with four different types of toys:

• Traditional toys (shape sorters, puzzles)
• Electronic educational toys (phones, talking farms)
• Picture books (board books with animals and shapes)
• Functional and emerging pretend play (tea sets, trucks)

Using five-minute audio recordings from each toy set sample, they coded the use of content-specific words associated with each toy, including color, shape, animal words, as well as animal sounds. Their findings showed that the picture book yielded the most content-specific words of all the toy types.

“Through the Child Communication Lab, I discovered my interest in conducting research and am excited to continue cultivating this passion as a graduate student,” says Apple. “Working in the lab challenged me to think outside the box and has given me the opportunity to take initiative in investigating concepts that intrigue me. If anything, my involvement in the lab has expanded the spectrum of possibilities for my professional career.”

—Kathryn Kao

Inspiring future scientists

Middle grade students explore world of genetics, science research at siSTEMas summer camp

Picture this—a group of scientists coming together on UGA’s campus to learn about genetics, predict genotypes with Punnett squares, and separate mixtures of DNA using gel electrophoresis.

Now picture these scientists as middle-grade learners from diverse and multilingual backgrounds.

To help make this image a potential reality for young learners, the researchers behind siSTEMas (Stimulating Immersive Science Through Engaging, Motivating, and Authentic Scenarios) created a five-day summer camp for underserved students, particularly Latinx learners.

These middle-grade students received hands-on experience conducting science research at the College’s inaugural siSTEMas Camp—a $1.3 million joint research and outreach project led by principal investigator and associate research scientist Georgia Hodges (B.S. ’99, M.Ed. ’03, Ph.D. ’10) in the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies Education.

“It's very important for students to know that you don't have to look a certain way and that you don't have to be a specific gender to do STEM,” says Hodges. “The exciting thing is we saw transitions from kids saying, ‘No, I'm not a scientist’ to ‘I really can be a scientist.’ We’re going to follow these kids into the classroom and see if they see themselves as leaders and if the camp impacts them long term.”

As Latinx multilingual learners represent only 7% of the STEM workforce, addressing issues at the beginning of the STEM pipeline when children are deciding whether STEM is a possible pathway for them is just one of several goals the siSTEMas team hopes to achieve in the next five years.

Hands-on learning

This summer, 25 students participated in the camp, with the first session running in June and the second in July. Researchers used the first session to determine any needed changes or adjustments to help the second group of students better grasp scientific concepts.

The campers conducted experiments in UGA’s genetics lab with doctoral student and lab manager Shaugnessy McCann (M.A.T. ’16, Ph.D. ’25) and learned how to extract strawberry DNA and collect samples of water from a turtle pond to observe under a microscope.

“These kids ran their own experiments, and they can do it,” says Hodges. “This is what everybody needs to know—kids can do it. If you tell people that we had sixth graders running their own gels, they’d say, ‘No, that's way too complicated and hard for kids today.”

In addition to learning about genetics in both English and Spanish and handling tools that middle-grade students might not normally use in traditional classroom settings, the campers met with different scientists each day during lunch in the dining hall.

These scientists—which included graduate students, professors, and research scientists at different stages of their careers—shared their personal experiences in the STEM field and answered questions about what it’s like to be a researcher in their field of study.

“Part of the camp was designed to support students seeing themselves in science,” says McCann. “Recognition as a scientist is so important, and we’ve seen them shift from not being interested in science and not feeling recognized in science to saying that they're interested in science and in science careers.”

Machine learning

Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the siSTEMas study also gives Hodges and her team the opportunity to expand Virtual Vet, an interactive digital learning game, for a more diverse student population.

Developed by Hodges and her team for another NIH study, the updated version of Virtual Vet will contain four new gameplay levels for middle-grade learners and support play in Spanish with a read-aloud functionality. The game levels address genetics concepts that teachers and researchers identify as difficult for middle-grade learners to understand.

“The analysis of student learning outcomes from the camp will inform the design of the new game levels,” says Hodges. “The main goal of the team’s design process is to create immersive environments that hands-on science activities cannot provide, including gathering data about multiple generations to examine genetics concepts.”

Students spend enough time in front of a computer, adds Hodges, so the team is strategizing on how best to build these learning environments by using new technologies, including machine learning and AI, to broaden the reach of the gaming environment.

“I believe that machine learning and artificial intelligence can help us and basically multiply the effect of the teacher,” says Hodges. “You can't replace a teacher with an immersive environment, and we have data to support that. Instead, what we're looking to do with machine learning is to multiply the teacher and provide them with resources.”

Currently, Virtual Vet contains around 150 assessment items, and students are provided with real-time feedback on student responses. The next iteration will provide students with tailored assessments and feedback during gameplay and teachers with more nuanced information about student learning during gameplay. 

Thanks to siSTEMas’ partnership with six school districts, more than 6,000 students will receive access to Virtual Vet for both elementary and middle-grade students.

Over the next few months, the research team—which includes doctoral student Ngutor Tembe (Ph.D. ’25)—will analyze videos and other data gathered from the siSTEMas Camp to examine multiple factors, including student knowledge, student attitudes toward science, student interest in pursuing a science field, and student mindset towards learning science in a multilingual, digital environment.

“We're looking to use virtual and machine learning algorithms to actually look at constructed responses and see how we can—in English and Spanish—support multilingual learners using machine learning to give feedback that students can use to make sense of science,” says Hodges. “In the future, we want to bring our campers in as mentors, so that they can see themselves as leaders and meet new scientists. Students really like the attention and recognition of being valued and having their knowledge valued.”

            —Kathryn Kao

Signing with Confidence

American Sign Language students receive immersive study abroad experience in Paris, France

This summer, a group of UGA students spent nearly two weeks in Paris, France, visiting an array of historic sites and immersing themselves in the city’s rich Deaf culture.

Now in its second year, the Mary Frances Early College of Education’s 10-day study abroad program gives American Sign Language (ASL) students the opportunity to learn about Deaf culture and history and discover new ways to immerse themselves in ASL.

Lecturer Brian Leffler in the Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education worked with Hands on Travel, a deaf-owned company that specializes in crafting immersive and enriching travel experiences for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, to create the program’s itinerary.

“I want students to experience Deaf culture and to communicate without their voice while learning the history of ASL and how it's connected to France,” says Leffler. “After studying abroad, students learn little by little how to negotiate different cultures and languages. At the same time, they keep in mind that we are the same—we just have different communication and cultural aspects.”

Guided by local deaf Parisians, students with at least level 3 competency readiness in ASL communicate solely through sign language to not only practice their signing skills but to experience what it’s like to travel as a deaf or hard-of-hearing person.

The group visited the birthplaces of deaf educators Laurent Clerc and Ferdinand Berthier in southern France, as well as the St. Jacques Deaf School, the deaf-owned International Visual Theatre, and the Deaf Museum. Other destinations included the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Versailles, and more.

Because the history of ASL is closely tied to French Deaf culture and French Sign Language (LSF), students could compare, contrast, and interpret the differences and commonalities between French Deaf culture and American Deaf culture.

“People might think that ASL is universal, and that's not the case,” says Leffler. “Students got an idea of what it is to be deaf and how it is to navigate this world being deaf. They're just really scratching the surface and learning to be more competent in their signing skills. There were so many different people in the French Deaf community we were able to have conversations with, and it was such a great experience.”

Deaf culture and history

During the trip, students took bonding over food to a whole new level.

At a deaf-owned Moroccan restaurant called 1000 & Signes, students applied what they learned using ASL to order food and converse with one another.

“This was one of my favorite locations, first because the food was delicious, and second because we were communicating with each other in ASL,” says Janet Mendoza (B.S.Ed. ’24), an undergraduate student in communication sciences and disorders. “It really was a bonding experience eating together and being able to communicate with everyone involved. I think all these places made me appreciate how beautiful Deaf culture is. It is so expressive and, in a way, allows people to bond, no matter their differences.”

At the National Institute for Deaf Youth, Mendoza and her peers communicated with French students using LSF and explored the city with another ASL group from Texas Women's University.

“I went to a different country to learn a different language with people I had never met before, and I was nervous,” added Mendoza. “However, I came back with new friends, more confident in my ASL, and new experiences that expanded my knowledge on Deaf culture.”

For the entirety of their stay in Paris, students communicated strictly using ASL, including at restaurants, museums, hotels, and on public transit.

This immersive experience helped psychology student Cindy Argueta (B.S. ’23) rapidly improve her ASL skills via regular day-to-day conversations. In addition to gaining a newfound understanding of how deaf or hard-of-hearing people navigate the world, Argueta also gained greater confidence in signing and expressing herself in public.

“In terms of Deaf culture, I expanded my knowledge on the history of ASL and the figures that were involved in developing its culture,” says Argueta. “A lot of people were intrigued when we signed in public, especially on the subways. They would always stare at us when we would communicate, and I thought, this is what deaf people must experience every day.”

Next summer, students who participate in the study abroad program will attend the Deaf Film Festival for the first time. The festival, which occurs once every two years, invites filmmakers from around the world to Paris for a three-day celebration of deaf film, culture, and arts.

The film festival will wrap up the last two days of the program when students typically feel more confident using their ASL skills, says Leffler.

“I learned about a culture that was much different from my own, I was able to gain different experiences and learn many things outside of my regular daily life,” says Argueta. “It helped me understand and learn about Deaf culture, ASL, and just etiquette around deaf individuals. I encourage everyone to take a single step to learn more about the world and people around them.”

—Kathryn Kao