Association for Behavior Analysis International

The four presentations in this symposium illustrate how evidence-based practices in instructional design and Precision Teaching can be combined in new ways to teach core instructional objectives to typical learners of all ages, including elementary, middle school, high school, and college students. In the first presentation, Shiloh Isbell will describe her design of a web-based application to teach, reinforce, and build the fluency of organizational skills that are critical helping adolescents who are struggling in school. In the second presentation, Traci Cihon will describe the Teaching Science Lab (TSL), a teaching and research laboratory for designing and improving college teaching procedures at the University of North Texas (UNT). A core feature of the TSL process is using student data to inform subsequent revisions. In the third presentation, Andrew Kieta will describe the current procedures developed by the TSL for teaching a Behavior Principles course at UNT, including brief lectures with Active Student Responding (ASL), Thinking Aloud Problem Solving (TAPS), Precision Teaching, and an application of Goldiamonds Constructional Approach. In the fourth presentation, Sheila Habarad will describe the 3-Part Warm-Up, a synthesis of Direct Instruction and Precision Teaching to review and make fluent key prerequisite skills in learning elementary school mathematics.

The standards-based education movement in the United States largely determines what will and will not be taught in our public schools. One area the Common Core State Standards do not address is the development of organizational skills, including how to study, take notes, manage time, schedule ahead, break assignments into parts, and keep materials organized. These are fundamental skills without which students cannot be successful, but which are assumed to be learned via osmosis. This presentation chronicles one year of development and implementation of a web-based application designed to teach and reinforce crucial organizational skills in adolescent and young adult students who are struggling in school. Aspects addressed include the rationale, collaborating with others outside the field of behavior analysis and education, the design process, problems with implementation and the debugging process, user feedback, scalability, and future goals. Eight months of learner data will be analyzed within a behavior analytic framework.

Institutions of Higher Education have been increasingly encouraged to employ evidence-based practices in the classroom. However, many faculty members continue to rely on more traditional instructional methods, and even faculty members who are well versed in evidence-based teaching techniques often fall back on these traditional instructional methods. We will describe the Teaching Science Lab (TSL); a faculty-advised, course-based teaching and research laboratory consisting of undergraduate and graduate students in behavior analysis who study the application of behavior analytic approaches to college teaching, conducting research, and enhancing undergraduate and graduate student learning outcomes. The TSL is an example of how faculty members can integrate both teaching and research responsibilities while incorporating several behavioral technologies into undergraduate course design. This presentation will highlight the history, organization, current status, and future directions of the TSL with respect to the use of evidence-based practice in the college classroom, a pyramidal approach to staff training, and the current and future research agenda

Morningside introduced a new teaching procedure in the math block. This procedure is the 3-Part Warm-Up that begins prior to instruction. The series of warm-up requires the students to use a variety of channels to reinforce their learning Common Core math skills and concepts that are regularly encountered in their text books, curriculum based assessments, and state tests. The highly interactive warm-up utilizes multiple channels; see-say during board work, see/think-write/say while identifying non-examples from examples, and hear-write providing further practice with the same skill. The 3-Part Warm-up emphasizes the development of math language skills that are largely assumed or not taught. The procedure teaches critical discrimination skills that are often overlooked during instruction. We will further discuss how this warm-up has been introduced across a variety of classrooms, including both larger general education and special education. Video clips of classrooms in Ohio, Hawaii, North Carolina, and Morningside will be used.