SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2024: Finger Lakes – Delia Ackerman

Delia Ackerman is an Associate Professor of American Sign Language (ASL) and ASL Coordinator at Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC).  She has a B.A. from Oswego State University; a M.A. from Syracuse University and holds Master’s level certification from the American Sign Language Teachers Association.  As a child of [born to] Deaf adults (CODA), ASL is her heritage language.

I began as adjunct faculty teaching the very first ASL course offered at FLCC in the fall 2006.   Since that time, I have established the A.A. ASL Program at FLCC, with a fully online option in 2023.  Notably, FLCC is the first SUNY institution to offer ASL in a fully online degree program.    

The Pandemic was the impetus I needed to begin development of the online ASL courses.  Prior to March 2020, despite the encouragement and full support from our director of online learning and our online support team, I was dead set against any ASL courses being offered online.  The shutdown of the SUNY campuses in March 2020, effectively forcing all faculty to teach remotely, changed my whole perspective of online learning, or rather, the ability of students to learn ASL fully online.  A few things I discovered very quickly were that the content had to be presented in a highly organized format and the instructional videos had to be of high quality.  Online ASL course development required a good deal of dedicated time, but once the flood of positive feedback from the online students started coming in, I was completely won over by the online modality.  Here are some comments from online ASL students:

“After this past year, as a teacher, I was a bit hesitant to do virtual learning from a student perspective, but the experience always felt very interactive and personal.”   Elementary teacher in NY, seeking TESOL certification.

“Your videos were a very big help along with the other online resources […] you are an expert in your field, and I can tell you spent a lot of time organizing the class work for your students.”  College student, remote location in NY.

“I am actually very sad this is my last language class. I REALLY like learning ASL […] I want to be more inclusive and help as many people as I can through physical therapy.”  Physical therapist in Vancouver, WA.

For anyone hesitant about developing an online course, I say, if American Sign Language can be taught very successfully online, I am certain your discipline content can be too. Go for it.