Contact: Maridith Geuder
MSU's Janice A. Thompson assists student Charles Bidwell
Charles H. Bidwell has never heard much from his Mississippi State class lectures. Because of a recently introduced university service, however, the senior wildlife and fisheries major isn't missing a thing this semester.
Bidwell, a Pensacola, Fla., resident with a profound hearing loss, now uses a note-taking system provided through MSU's Office of Student Support Services to "see" what his teacher is saying. Called C-Print, the system uses a laptop computer on which a transcriber, or captionist, types the lecture as the teacher speaks.
In addition to displaying the comments on a computer screen, the text is printed out after the class for a permanent record.
The system depends on word-processing software that compresses language and reduces the number of keystrokes. As a result, Bidwell can experience a real-time lecture, complete with asides, questions and the inevitable inside jokes.
He is among more than 250 persons with a variety of disabilities currently utilizing a range of resources available through the MSU office. In addition to C-Print and other auxiliary aids, Student Support Services-which has one of the largest collegiate constituencies in the Southeast-offers advocacy, testing and referral programs.
"C-Print is similar to the transcription system used by court reporters," said deaf services coordinator Janice A. Thompson. Having trained for six weeks, she is among the first in Mississippi to achieve the level of captionist.
C-Print, which was developed at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology, offers several advantages over traditional uses of laptop computers for note taking.
"Even an accomplished typist cannot keep up with the pace of natural speech," Thompson observed. "The compression software allows a captionist to translate language much more quickly into a visual format."
Thompson, who holds a master's degree in speech pathology and audiology, also serves as a resource for MSU students communicating with American Sign Language. Both the ASL and C-Print tasks are approached in the same way, she said.
"I familiarize myself in general with the subject of the class so that I'm aware of terms and concepts," she said. Since class attendance is necessary, "I become a student myself in some ways," she added.
Thompson is at Charles Bidwell's side during four of his five weekly course sessions. Before C-Print, he relied on friends to share class notes. He also captured as much instruction as possible by lip-reading, then spent hours in follow-up study.
"I'm very pleased to have C-Print," he said. "It really helps me understand all of the materials my professors are presenting."
To volunteer for or learn more about MSU's Office of Student Support Services, telephone (662) 325-3335.