Teleconsultation in school settings: linking classroom teachers and behavior analysts through web-based technology.

Area of Science:

• Applied Behavior Analysis
• Educational Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Challenging behaviors in preschool settings require effective assessment and intervention strategies.
• Traditional functional analysis methods can be resource-intensive for school teams.
• Web-based technology offers potential solutions for remote collaboration and support.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a collaborative model for functional behavior assessment (FBA) using web-based technology.
• To illustrate the implementation of this model in a preschool setting.
• To evaluate the feasibility and potential of technology-assisted FBA.

Main Methods:

• A school team conducted a functional analysis of a preschool child's challenging behaviors.
• University-based behavior analysts provided training, consultation, and live web-based feedback.
• Web-based tools facilitated communication and data sharing between the school and university teams.

Main Results:

• The school team successfully implemented the functional analysis with high fidelity.
• Data collected were scored reliably, indicating successful application of the methodology.
• The collaborative model demonstrated potential for effective assessment and intervention development.

Conclusions:

• Web-based technology can significantly enhance collaboration between school personnel and behavior analysts.
• This approach shows promise for ongoing assessment and intervention development for challenging behaviors.
• Further empirical evaluation is recommended before widespread adoption of this model.