Topic Tuesday: Data Data Data!

As behavior analysts we graph a lot of data!  One of the things that we graph are the skills that we are teaching.

Why do we do all of this crazy graphing?  The trends in the data tell us how our student is learning.

For example, Do we need to change our teaching methods because they are not acquiring the skill? The graph below is showing us that there is no learning going on and that something needs to be changed.  The red line is flat and near 0%, the student is not acquiring the skill of identifying familiar people with the current teaching strategies.  It is time to change things up!

The graphs also tell us when our student has mastered a skill or part of the skill.  The graph below shows us that the student has learned the current target at the current prompt level and it is time to either fade prompting, introduce new targets, or work on generalization of targets.  This graph shows us that there is some great learning going on!