TeachTown

signed for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) between the ages of 2 to 7 years developmentally. The curriculum includes the following learning domains: 1) Language Development; 2) Social and Emotional Skills; 3) Adaptive Skills; 4) Cognitive Skills; 5) Language Arts; and 6) Mathematics. Each domain has 5 levels: 1) Toddler; 2) Preschool; 3) Pre-K; 4) Kindergarten; and 5) Grade 1. Upon enrollment, the teacher completes a ranking questionnaire regarding the student’s current performance that places each student at a starting rank (i.e. level) for each domain. The curriculum is then dependent on student performance and is adjusted for each student. Teachers can customize the curriculum to meet IEP goals. See the Core Computer Curriculum attachment for an outline of the TeachTown: Basics scope and sequence.

ABA Teaching Approach

The instructional methodologies in the TeachTown: Basics program incorporate common techniques in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). Specifically, Discrete Trial instruction and Pivotal Response Training (PRT) are combined as follows: The program presents objectives in discrete tasks and guides learning through prompting and reinforcement (e.g. Lovaas, 1987). The student chooses and starts a lesson by clicking on a building in the town scene. Child-choice keeps motivation and attention to task high (e.g. Koegel, O’Dell, & Koegel, 1987). Depending on the student’s previous history with the lesson, a pre-test, learning exercise, or post-test is presented. Maintenance tasks are interspersed throughout the exercises and occur

for 20% of the trials. Maintenance tasks help the student preserve previously learned skills and keep the student motivated and on task (Koegel, et al, 1989). Each trial follows the discrete trial model (Lovaas, 1987; Smith, Groen, & Wynn, 2000) where the discriminative stimulus is presented (i.e. the instructional cue requiring student response) by presenting 1 or more images (e.g. a happy, sad, and angry face) with a vocal instruction (e.g. “Find the person that is happy”). Next, the student responds by selecting one of the images (e.g. clicks or touches [touch screen] the happy face). A correct response elicits a positive statement (e.g. “You did it!”) followed by a brief (3 second) inter-trial interval (i.e. pause between trials) and the next trial is presented. An incorrect response elicits an isolated lingering correct answer. Due to earlier findings, negative feedback is not included because of reinforcement potential. Students (particularly ASDs) in the pilot phase seemed to choose the incorrect images deliberately and repeatedly to hear the “negative” feedback (e.g. “Try again”). For pre and post-tests, 25 trials are presented including 4 different concepts (e.g. happy, sad, angry, confused). For learning trials, 15 trials are presented (with 3 maintenance trials) targeting at least 2 concepts (e.g. happy and sad). The standard mastery criterion is 80% correct (Lovaas, 1987; Smith, Groen, & Wynn, 2000). The TeachTown: Basics program also requires 80% correct. All responses are coded and presented graphically.

PromptingTrial difficulty is controlled by within-stimulus prompting which has been shown to result in better discrimination, generalization, and independence (i.e. prompt fading) in 1:1 trials (Schreibman, 1975) and using the computer (Panyan, 1984). When necessary, a least to most prompting strategy is utilized (stimuli are introduced in a weak [i.e. faded images] form and gradually strengthened [i.e. saturated images]). Gradually introducing distracters at the student’s pace maximizes learning and minimizes errors that help the student discriminate stimuli (Perez-Gonzalez & Williams, 2002).