General Lab Information
To receive credit for a lab class, students must work for 2.5 hours per week in the ASL/Interpreting Lab, for a total of 40 hours. Suggested weekly assignments will be available from my home page. Lab assistants can help you find the appropriate materials and answer any questions you may have regarding the equipment. If you cannot complete the hours in a specified week, you should plan to make up the time within two weeks.
You may spend lab time working on assignments for any of your sign language classes, but you may not earn credit for time spent on e-mail or on homework for other classes. If you are not working on ASL related assignments, the lab assistants will ask you to log out.
To receive credit and document your hours, be sure to log in and out of the lab using your PIC card or student I.D. number. If you don’t log out, the computer will not record the hours you worked.
By week three, all communication in the lab should follow Deaf cultural values. In other words, all communication should be signed, pantomimed, or written. Please keep the lab visually accessible at all times. If the video and workbook you need are already in use, take advantage of the opportunity to work with a partner.
During the course of the semester, you may attend two separate events in the Deaf community. Events must be chosen from a list of approved events, and they are generally in San Diego where there is a larger population of Deaf people to attend events. Check with a lab assistant to make sure your event is approved. After attending the event, write a 1-2 page paper about your observations. What did you learn about Deaf people, their language, and their culture? You will earn 3 hours of credit toward lab for attending these events, up to a total of six hours. This would reduce the overall number of lab hours required to 34!
Please be aware that the American Sign Language/Interpreting Lab is closed during all school holidays. Check the school master calendar for current semester closures.
The teacher responsible for all ASL Lab classes is Melissa Smith, who can be reached at mbsmith@palomar.edu.