


*Year 1 modules span a duration of 4-6 weeks.


Intensive Intervention: What is It and Why is It Important?

Learning Objectives:

  • Evaluate current outcomes for students with disabilities in U.S. schools and generate a hypothesis regarding the cause of these outcomes.
  • Describe the characteristics of students with disabilities who have demonstrated poor response to current remediation efforts.
  • Define “intensive intervention” and distinguish key features that differentiate this approach from instruction provided in Tiers 1 and 2.
  • Generate an argument to support the need for intensive intervention, including a hypothesis regarding why intensive intervention may lead to improved outcomes for students with disabilities.


Using General Outcome Measurement to Evaluate Response to Intensification.

Learning Objectives:

  • Define general outcome measurement and contrast it with other common forms of classroom assessment.
  • Describe the conditions that facilitate teachers’ use of data-based decision making for planning interventions.
  • Describe the core features of DBI (Data-Based Individualization) and outline its use in reading and mathematics.
  • Contrast the use of general outcome measurement, CBM specifically, to plan for intervention in academics versus behavior.
  • Generate recommendations for teachers’ use of DBI and provide a rationale for these recommendations.


Using Mastery Measurement to Evaluate Response to Intensification

Learning objectives:

  • Identify challenges associated with traditional specific subskill mastery measurement.
  • Identify reasons for needing to consider alternate approaches to monitoring student progress beyond  general outcome measurement.
  • Describe five alternative measurement approaches that may be useful in monitoring student progress.
  • For each approach, describe the measurement system, the relationship with intensifying intervention, potential limitations, and necessary next steps regarding related research.


Using Single-Case Design to Evaluate Response to Intensification

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify and describe the five core features of single-case design methods including (a) experimental control, (b) operational definitions of the target behavior or skill, (c) the use of repeated measures of the target behavior or skill, (d) presenting data in a graphical form, and (e) using visual analysis to examine data patterns.
  • Describe how these core single-case features can be used to intensify interventions and evaluate student responsiveness.
  • Describe how a single-case framework can be used to consider intensification and evaluation for both academics and behavior.


Alternative Approaches to Intensive Intervention

Learning Objectives:

  • Define the terms “nomothetic” and “idiographic” and give examples of each.
  • Self-identify as nomothetic or idiographic with a rationale for their decision
  • Connect the nomothetic-idiographic distinction to different research traditions and areas of study (academic versus social behavior)
  • Explain how cognitive intervention and aptitude-by-treatment interactions are appealing, how they relate to the N/I distinction, why they have been so thoroughly rejected, and why they have had a recent re-emergence.


Synthesis of Intensive Intervention Approaches

Learning Objectives:

  • Synthesize learning thus far by identifying key components related to intensifying intervention–using extant research to justify the level of confidence in these findings–and identifying needs for future research.


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