Cochlear Implant University: Supporting high school and college students with cochlear implants transition to higher education

This paper presents evaluation findings of the Cochlear Implant University (CIU), an interactive, self-advocacy skills-building website to support high school and college students with cochlear implants (SWCI) and their parents as these students transition to higher education (HE). Students with cochlear implants in HE may experience academic and social challenges compared to their hearing peers, which in turn relate to high dropout rates and poor academic and social outcomes. Self-advocacy skills may mediate some of these poor outcomes by increasing students’ abilities to effectively communicate their needs.

We evaluated CIU, a website with sections for SWCI in high school (HS SWCI) and higher education (HE SWCI), using the following research question: To what extent does CIU positively change SWCI’s knowledge on HE transition topics, positive attitudes toward self-advocating in HE environments, self-efficacy to advocate, and intentions to advocate?

We collected primary quantitative data from 60 HS SWCI and 60 HE SWCI. We used a pretest/post-test quasi-experimental design to explore the statistical relationship between exposure to CIU and dependent variables of the website’s efficacy. Findings suggest CIU increases SWCI’s knowledge and self-efficacy, but we saw little change on attitudinal measures, which were high at baseline. The findings indicate that CIU increases SWCI’s knowledge and self-efficacy skills on topics related to the successful transition to higher education.