by Jocasta Williams
Students come to Sara Pivac Alexander’s New Zealand Sign Language classes for all sorts of reasons. Some are interested in learning another language; others see NZSL as a valuable addition to degrees in areas such as law, science, IT or education, or as a skill they may draw on in their future careers. And for some, the recommendation is much simpler: friends have told them it’s a fun subject to take.
Whatever brings them through the door, they’re learning one of New Zealand’s official languages – and one that demands a very different approach to teaching and learning. As a Senior Lecturer in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, Sara teaches around 60 first-year and 20 second-year students each year. For first-year students, the goal is to develop the skills to hold basic conversations about everyday topics and communicate with Deaf people they may meet in the community. Learning those skills requires far more than memorising vocabulary. NZSL is a visual, three-dimensional language in which eye gaze, facial expression, and movement all carry meaning. For Sara, that makes the environment in which students learn particularly important.
Most university classrooms aren’t designed with sign language in mind, and the physical space can have a significant impact on how Sara is able to teach. “University classrooms are generally designed for hearing people,” she explains. “As a sign language teacher, I need to move around, and the students need to be able to see each other clearly. We don’t have dedicated classrooms, so wherever we’re placed needs to have enough space and flexibility to arrange everyone in a horseshoe.”
That physical environment matters because Sara’s classes are built around interaction. When she introduces new language, she models it first before students practise together through conversations, dialogues, role plays and other activities that require them to actively use what they’re learning. Classes are limited to around 20 students, allowing Sara to make eye contact with everyone and giving students plenty of opportunities to work together.
Face-to-face teaching is central to that experience. While learning NZSL online is possible, Sara says being physically together gives students a much richer understanding of the language and the behaviours that accompany it. “Sign language is obviously a 3D language and it’s much better if students can see the full dimensionality,” she says. “We teach things like Deaf communication behaviours like eye gaze and how to get people’s attention by tapping them on the shoulder. So, you need to do that in an embodied way.”
While face-to-face interaction remains at the heart of Sara’s teaching, learning continues well beyond the classroom. Weekly Signing coffee sessions give students a chance to meet other NZSL students and interact with Deaf sign language users, while regular homework gives them opportunities to practise independently. Video plays an important role in those homework tasks – as well as across the course’s assessment design – particularly when students need to demonstrate their expressive skills.
That’s where EchoReflect comes in. Sara uses it across both homework and assessment, creating video-based activities that allow students to practise and demonstrate their NZSL in a variety of ways. A written English word might appear briefly on screen, requiring students to immediately produce the corresponding NZSL vocabulary. They might be given a picture and asked to develop a signed narrative, or watch a signed sentence before reproducing it themselves. Other activities simulate a conversation, with Sara recording questions that students watch and respond to in sequence. By controlling response times or how often a stimulus can be viewed, she can assess students’ ability to draw on their knowledge in the moment.
The recordings also give Sara a structured way to assess what students produce. Rubrics support consistent marking, while tags can identify grammatical features within a video. For a second-year portfolio, for example, Sara can tag structures as they appear and then see the range a student has demonstrated. For a language where so much of what students are learning is demonstrated visually rather than on a page, that creates a tangible record of their performance.
Video also changes the way Sara can respond to students’ work. Some feedback is straightforward to provide in written English, but other aspects of NZSL are much harder to describe in words. A particular sign may not appear in a dictionary, a student may need to see how a sentence should be structured, or the important detail might be a facial expression accompanying the sign.
In those cases, Sara can respond with a short video of herself signing, sometimes accompanied by an English comment. “If there’s something difficult to explain, it’s much more direct to just video myself signing, because it’s a visual language,” she says. “Sometimes I want to talk about something that’s maybe not in a dictionary, and I can just illustrate it immediately.”
Sara deliberately keeps that feedback manageable, giving students small pieces of regular feedback they can put into practice as their language develops. By second year, the feedback process becomes increasingly collaborative, with students watching one another’s signing and offering short peer responses about what worked well and what could be improved.
Watching other students sign becomes another form of learning. Students are exposed to different approaches, notice things in someone else’s performance they may not recognise in their own, and learn how to give constructive feedback. For Sara, that makes peer feedback incredibly valuable in its own right, rather than simply a way to reduce the amount of teacher feedback required.
That progression from teacher feedback to peer learning reflects a broader change Sara sees across the two years. In first year, students’ recordings are generally seen only by their teacher, creating a relatively private, safe environment in which they can practise and make mistakes. Regular feedback helps them develop the fundamentals and gradually become more comfortable expressing themselves in NZSL.
By second year, students are increasingly sharing their work with classmates. That requires greater trust and a willingness to take risks, but Sara says it also helps build confidence. By the time students submit their portfolios at the end of second year, she can see how much more comfortable they have become with both the language and having others watch them use it.
Practising outside class also gives students greater independence. Homework, portfolios and peer feedback can continue between face-to-face sessions, allowing students to take more responsibility for their own development rather than relying on their teacher for every interaction. That balance is particularly important for a language that depends so strongly on people being together. Face-to-face classes provide the embodied interaction, eye contact and three-dimensional communication students need, while video extends their opportunities to practise, receive feedback and learn from one another beyond the classroom. For Sara, the two experiences work together: the classroom provides the human interaction at the heart of NZSL, while EchoReflect gives students a way to keep practising and gradually become more confident and independent in the language they’re learning.
With thanks to Dr. Rachel McKee for interpreting our interview with Sara.
Echo360 is the global edtech leader enabling transformative learning experiences for education and business through the AI-powered Echosystem: the world’s first and only Learning Transformation Platform (LTP) that delivers dynamic creation, engagement, and assessment of education and training at scale worldwide. With innovative authoring (EchoInk), video (EchoVideo), engagement (EchoEngage), assessment (EchoExam), and video-based skills practice and feedback (EchoReflect), the Echosystem is an interoperable, modular platform.
