PP1320 - Hearing Loss and Virtual Learning Fatigue in Post-Secondary Students

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to considerable changes in the number of students taking online classes and participating in virtual learning through Zoom and other video conferencing platforms. How this change and the delivery of educational materials might contribute to fatigue in college and university students with hearing loss is an essential topic for ensuring appropriate accommodations and accessibility of materials. "Zoom exhaustion" and virtual learning fatigue are phenomena described by previous literature, but these studies do not address the specific challenges faced by students with hearing loss. Thus, in this study, we sought to understand how virtual learning affects fatigue in post-secondary students with hearing loss.
During this presentation, we will discuss results from a behavioral study administered through Qualtrics to assess fatigue in post-secondary students with hearing loss. Study participants were limited to Undergraduate, Master's, Au.D., and Ph.D. students with mild, moderate, moderately-severe, severe, and profound hearing loss; they all are at least 18 years of age, and all subjects participated in virtual classrooms at least once since March 2020. We also collected data from a control group with no history of hearing loss or difficulty. We collected data from 64 participants, including 17 with no hearing loss (the control group), 13 with mild hearing loss, 16 with moderate hearing loss, 11 with severe hearing loss, and 7 with profound hearing loss. All participants provided informed consent and were paid for their participation. Procedures were approved by the UT Austin Institutional Review Board.
Participants that fit the criteria were provided a link to a survey (via Qualtrics) where they were asked to complete a task containing two parts. During the first part of the task, participants were asked to provide demographic information and then were asked in the second part to answer questions and rank agreements regarding virtual participation in educational environments, accommodations, fatigue, and struggles with virtual learning. They were also asked about available and preferred accommodations within virtual classrooms. We expect to see a positive significant relationship between the severity of hearing loss and the participant’s subjective fatigue scale. We also expect to see significant differences in visual cue usage and preferences of accommodations between participants with hearing loss and the control group. We plan to analyze these data using inferential statistics such as ANOVA and t-tests to understand the effect of hearing loss on fatigue and interactions with the availability of accommodations. Preliminary results suggest that participants with mild and moderate hearing loss may actually show higher fatigue than participants with severe and profound hearing loss. This investigation will contribute to our understanding of the significant role of visual cues, if any, in virtual classrooms. It will also allow us to recognize areas where students with hearing loss are significantly experiencing negative consequences. Our results will be important for understanding best practices for improving online education and virtual learning for students with hearing loss. The comprehensive results of this study will be identified and documented before February 14, 2023.