Hi, I'm Doctor Kristi Buckley. I'll be your instructor this semester for introduction to hearing disorders. 

I'm originally from Texas, born and raised. I spent, let's see, 40 years of my life in the Dallas, Texas area. I went to the University of Texas at Dallas where I got my undergraduate, master's, and PH.D. Degree in audiology. I have a specialty in pediatric oral habitation, which means I specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of children with hearing disorders. 

As I was completing my studies, I realized that one of the things that really made me happy was explaining what I do to other people and igniting that passion in others. And that has led me to being an instructor in this field and sharing my knowledge and my passion for the field with you, the students. I really look forward to doing that this semester. 

This semester we're going to be learning about basic audiometric procedures. How to test someone's hearing. How to tell the difference between different types of hearing loss. Whether the loss is a problem that's occurring in the middle ear or in the inner ear or perhaps even as high as the brain stem or the cortex. So we'll be looking at how to do that. 

In addition, we'll look at different disorders of hearing, different causes for hearing loss, the most common ones. And you're probably thinking, or many of you are thinking anyway, I'm gonna be an SLP not an audiologist. Why do I need to do this? Well, hearing loss has an effect on your patient's ability to hear what you're doing. If they can't hear what you're trying to teach them, they're gonna have a great bit of difficulty learning it. 

And if you're working with children, they have to be able to hear speech and language in order to learn it. So if they don't hear sounds like "Ss" and the ability to learn the concept of plurals or possessives, it's going to be extremely difficult for them. 

As we go through the semester, since this is an online course, you'll be watching recorded lectures. I'm going to break the lectures up into smaller bits each week. So each week you'll have several recorded lectures to watch rather than one big, long lecture. There'll be a weekly quiz for you to see if you've comprehended the information that we've covered that week. You'll always have multiple attempts on that quiz so that you can learn from your mistakes. We'll be meeting several times throughout the semester, online, and we'll do some group projects during those meetings. 

The challenge of testing children really is fun to me. I love that challenge. And then, when you get to the rehabilitation portion, where you have an infant that has a hearing loss and you've discovered the hearing loss, you've done the testing, and now you're gonna fit the hearing aid. And putting an infant on a hearing aid and being there when they hear their mother's voice for the very first time; there's no feeling or sensation like that in the world. And I carry that with me every day and I want you guys to be able to experience that sort of life changing event. It's a small moment in time, but it has a lasting effect, not only on you but that child, that they're able to hear their mother's voice and that parent child bond becomes that much stronger.