As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, professionals in the field of behavior analysis and education have continually asked how to help students access quality education while still keeping them safe and healthy. There have been multiple options presented that allow students to access their education, such as being fully in-person, fully virtual, and a hybrid option that includes both in-person and virtual learning. Due to different factors, families may choose a full virtual option for their children. But then the question becomes, “how do we make sure they log into their classes on time?” School attendance continues to be an issue across the country and adding in a virtual element to education is something that hasn’t been dealt with in a large-scale effort before. The current study attempted to increase attendance for middle school students that were learning in a full virtual format by means of sending email reminders to the student and their parents, setting daily goals with the student, and providing positive reinforcement by delivering items to the student’s home. Results indicated that this specific intervention package, as outlined, was not an effective method to help middle school students increase their virtual class attendance. Future studies should focus on other intervention packages that can help students learning in a full virtual format to attend their Zoom sessions and access the quality education they deserve.

Many students with intellectual disabilities and autism struggle to have meaningful social interactions with their peers. Research shows that using video modeling can increase social skills in students with disabilities, but it has never been studied in comparison to or in combination with “IF….THEN…” behavior contracts. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of video prompts on elementary-aged students with disabilities to increase appropriate social interactions with their peers through filming the creation of an “IF….THEN…”contract. The participants are four elementary-aged students with intellectual disabilities and autism who have target social skills deficits. The targeted social skills were: greeting peers, initiating conversations, and asking peers to play. The use of “IF….THEN…” contracts, contracts plus structured review, and contracts plus video prompting was evaluated. Each participant had a baseline of zero and after treatment increased the frequency of social skills from one to three instances. Data collected showed both the interventions of “IF….THEN….” contracts plus structured review and contracts plus video prompting were similarly effective at increasing social skills. Treatment had lasting effects in three of the participants when it was completely phased out.

Several empirical studies have suggested that self-monitoring is an effective strategy to increase appropriate behavior in children and adults with developmental disabilities. Results of a comprehensive review of self-monitoring research with people who have developmental disabilities revealed that 71% of the participants were trained by researchers. However, researchers are not typical intervention agents. To ensure that people who are typically in the participant’s environment (e.g., teachers, parents, caregivers) can effectively teach people with developmental disabilities to self-monitor and that this in turn will change the participant’s behavior, it is important that research examine the effectiveness of self-monitoring when the training is provided by typical intervention agents. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation study was to investigate the effects of a self-monitoring intervention package on both teacher and student behavior in the classroom. The self-monitoring intervention package consisted of training teachers to use self-monitoring, providing feedback on the self-monitoring intervention developed by the teacher, providing feedback to teachers while training the student to self-monitor, and providing feedback to teachers while they implemented the self-monitoring intervention in the classroom. During intervention, the researchers provided feedback to teachers to ensure that teachers were correctly instructing the students to self-monitor. Teachers then implemented the self-monitoring intervention without researcher feedback (maintenance). Teachers required very little to no feedback after the self-monitoring training, feedback on the self-monitoring intervention they developed, and student self-monitoring training. The researcher provided immediate feedback during the first session when the self-monitoring intervention was implemented in the classroom to ensure the teachers implemented the self-monitoring intervention with fidelity. Rate of inappropriate sitting decreased for all students after the self-monitoring intervention was introduced, and the percentage of non-overlapping data metric values indicated that the self-monitoring interventions were highly effective for three participants and effective for one participant. Some teachers and some students generalized the use of self-monitoring interventions to other activities, students, and target behaviors. Social validity measures indicate that self-monitoring interventions for young children with developmental disabilities are socially important. / text