Deaf/hard-of-hearing and other postsecondary learners' retention of STEM content with tablet computer-based notes

Four groups of postsecondary students, 25 who were deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH), 25 with a learning disability, 25 who were English language learners (ELLs), and 25 without an identified disability studied notes that included text and graphical information based on a physics or a marine biology lecture. The latter 3 groups were normally hearing. All groups had higher scores on post- than on pretests for each lecture, with each group showing generally similar gains in amount of material learned from the pretest to the posttest. For each lecture, the D/HH students scored lower on the pre- and posttests than the other 3 groups of participants. Results indicated that students acquired measurable amounts of information from studying these types of notes for relatively short periods and that the notes have equal potential to support the acquisition of information by each of these groups of students.