Type of Project: Funded project Scientific Work
Blended Learning Seminars for the Training of Occupationally Relevant Communicative and Social Skills of Deaf People (Deaf Train)

The project DeafTrain (Aachener Blended-Learning Seminare zum Training berufsrelevanter kommunikativer und sozialer Kompetenzen Gehörloser ) has the primary goal to improve the social and communicative competencies of adolescent and adult deaf people. This is to be achieved by the following procedure: 1. Development of blended-learning seminars for the barrier-free promotion of social and communicative competences among young and adult deaf people (with special consideration of the needs of deaf people with migration background) 2. Training and support of professionals working in the education and training of deaf people in the application of the blended-learning seminars 3. Development of a lecturer platform, in which multimedia seminar materials for download, a social network for trainers, virtual learning rooms and eLearning courses in media, linguistically and culturally adapted formats are integrated. In the DeafTrain project, seminar materials and concepts are developed, which enable the target group of the hearing impaired to acquire the social and communicative skills and competences, which, in addition to the acquisition of professional knowledge, are instrumental in the successful integration of the deaf into the primary labor market. All seminar modules are adapted to the communicative and cultural needs of this target group and are implemented in multimedia and multilingual form. Seminar concepts and materials are developed by deaf and hearing experts of the Aachen Research Group for the Deaf, produced as sign language videos with subtitles and offered via a lecturer portal. This portal can draw on existing technical development of the research group and be linked to established sign language portals such as www.gebaerdensprache.de and www.vibelle.de to ensure an immediate practical introduction. The seminar materials can be downloaded and used for daily work by all stakeholders and institutions involved in education, training and schooling of the deaf. The seminars are held by the team members in the requesting institutions (vocational training centers, integration services, schools, counseling and support institutions, self-help groups). The professionals on site are thus instructed in the use of the accessible, sign language seminar concepts and materials (train-the-trainer).