ASL University offers online ASL classes to the public. We were one
of the first organizations to offer online instruction in ASL. While
literally millions of people have enjoyed learning from the free ASL lessons
available at Lifeprint.com -- many have asked for actual online ASL classes
to provide additional motivation, structure, and/or to fulfill requirements
for their local home-school, college, or employment organization.
In order to help students achieve their local goals,
ASLU set up a series of tuition-based ASL courses that include features such
as assignments, quizzes,
tracking, an instructor-graded video project, a proctored final exam, a
letter-grade, and human-signature documentation for students who need to
provide to their employer, college, school district, or other organization
documentation to prove that they have successfully participated in an organized continuing education experience under
responsible sponsorship, capable direction and qualified instruction.
Before you register, we would like to make
sure you are clear on a few things:
ASLU provides documentation in the form of "Continuing
Education Units" which are commonly referred to as "CEUs." A continuing
education unit is not the same as as college credit. We
do not award college credit. Many local schools will award you credit for
and/or accept
your participation in this program for local credit. Check with your local college
or high school to determine if they will accept your work in this program
for credit. Get it in writing. The ASLU transcript provides
letter-grades based on test scores and completed assignments.
Whether or not you can use an ASL University ASL
course for credit at your local
school depends on your local school. A common approach is to
sign up for independent study credit at your local college and then use the ASLU
course as the content for that independent study course.
For a college student, that generally means registering at your local
college for an "independent study" class under a local instructor and
then completing the ASLU course and then having the Lifeprint instructor
send to your local instructor documentation of your having completed the
Lifeprint ASL course. At that point the local instructor could award you
college credit (based on independent study) for your participation in this
program. Many home-schooled high school (and middle school) students use the
ASLU courses to satisfy their local language study requirements.
What do you get if you register for an ASLU ASL course?
After registering and paying for an ASLU course you get a syllabus explaining the course requirements, access to a series
of auto-graded quizzes based on the lessons, access to the receptive final exam,
feedback on your final exam, evaluation of your expressive video project, and full
documentation of your participation in the program including a letter
grade. You also receive access to a qualified instructor to whom you
can ask your various ASL-course-related questions for up to a year. (Your syllabus will cover what your assignments are and how to do
them, but in general you can expect your assignments include: 15 lesson
quizzes, 3 unit quizzes, an ASL or Deaf Culture related research paper, a
video project with feedback, and an instructor-graded
receptive final).
If you feel you might like to register you can
click here to check out the registration letter.
QUESTION:
[In an email message thompsonrebirth@ writes]
If I take the free lessons how much is the certificate of completion? How
much does it cost if I decide to register? Do the registered classes cover
more info than the free ones. How long does it take to complete the lessons
and obtain the certificate?
Reply: Let's do those one at a time:
Question: "If I take the free lessons how much is the certificate
of completion?"
Answer: ASL University doesn't give certificates of completion to
non-registered students who self-study the
free lessons. Thousands of people self-study
from the ASLU (Lifeprint.com) website. A "certificate of completion"
implies that someone has certified that you have completed a course of
study. We
simply don't have time to evaluate each web user on a personal basis for
free. So, we only provide documentation to registered, tuition-paying students who
have demonstrated to us through an evaluated video submission and a
proctored final exam as well as successful completion of numerous serious
quizzes (not the free practice quizzes but a different more serious set of
video-based quizzes that are behind a paywall in a passworded Learning
Management System) that they have
achieved a level of competency similar to that of the college-level courses
we teach during our day-jobs as college instructors.
Question: How much does it cost if I decide to register?
Answer: Tuition per course is $483.
There are no other fees.
Statement: Wow, that seems like a lot!
Response: This is a serious program directed by the former
coordinator of a California State University ASL and Deaf Studies program (a
full-time, fully-tenured, full professor with a doctorate degree in Deaf
Education from an accredited university: Dr. Bill Vicars who is currently a
California State University professor emeritus). Tuition also helps pay
for domain registration fees, website hosting fees, dedicated IP address fee,
cloud storage expenses, internet access, secure socket layer (SSL) certificate
fee, software subscription fees, learning management system fees, equipment
expenses (computers, monitors purchase, maintenance, and replacement costs for
hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, cables, cameras, tripods, lenses, etc.),
office expenses (electricity, insurance, rent, etc.).
Question: Do the registered classes cover more info than the free
ones.
Answer: Registered students
have to take more in-depth video-based quizzes. Additionally we will
evaluate your expressive-project video, your receptive final, and your
research paper. We will verify your completion of the (more advanced) quizzes. Plus you get
documentation of your results, (a transcript) including a letter grade.
Question: How long does it take to complete the lessons and obtain
the documentation?
Answer: That is up to you. You can progress at whatever
pace works best for you in your situation. If you want to finish in a
semester do one or two lessons a week. If you want to finish in a high
school year (9 months) then take two weeks per lesson.
Officially, we allow up to a year (12 months) to complete a course.
If you were in a hurry, you could complete a course in about a month by
doing a lesson per day plus a couple days for submitting your expressive
video. If you have no other classes and are able to work on it "full time"
(serious effort / eight hours a day) you could do two or three lessons a day and get done in
a couple weeks (plus an additional week for submission of your video and
final exam). Keep in mind though, according to the syllabus you have to pass
the video project and final exam at 70% or better, so make sure you actually take the time to
absorb what you are studying. Our recommendation is that you do at
least one lesson
a week (and review every week). This is based on the fact that on-campus college students
typically do 15 lessons in 15 weeks (first semester) for Level 1, and then
15 more lessons in another 15 weeks (second semester) for level 2. (Note:
1 semester of college language coursework is considered equivalent to 1 year
of HS language coursework). Near the end of each course level
you need to allow a couple of weeks to turn in research paper, a video project (based on a script and
instructions provided by the instructor), and take a proctored final exam.
Question: So, you don't give credit, you just give me a letter
from you that says I took your course and I received a certain grade.
Why should I register?
Answer: If you are homeschooling and need solid documentation of
having participated in an organized continuing education experience under
responsible sponsorship, capable direction and qualified instruction
then registration here would be a solid choice. If you are attending a
college that will let you do independent study and give you credit for
independent study then registration at ASLU is a good choice.
ASLU offers the documentation option because many
local colleges, high schools, and companies will only accept training and
continuing education units from well-documented credible sources. The director of Lifeprint
(Dr. Bill) holds an earned doctorate in this field
(Deaf Education / Deaf Studies) from an accredited
university (Lamar University in Texas) and has over 20 years of college-level experience teaching ASL.
If you do not need a structured ASL course with assignments, testing, and documentation
and instead just want to "learn ASL" then sure, save some money and self-study using the materials at Lifeprint.com.
Feel free to
donate though,
;-)
Question: What kind of study materials are used?
Answer: The Lifeprint website is used as the "text" for the courses. Each course
(level) consists of 15 lessons, 15 quizzes, 3 unit tests, a research paper, an expressive
video project, and a receptive final. The video quizzes are provided
via links to streaming videos that download to your computer's internet
browser. A "unit" covers 5 lessons. For example, the
"Unit 1 Test" corresponds to the first five lessons of the "Level 1" course. The quiz questions are based on the vocabulary, practice
sheets, and instructional videos from the lessons online at Lifeprint.com.
If you have additional questions after reading the
registration
letter, please read through the
Frequently Asked Questions
page.
Still here? Good for you...
