Project Description:
Children with severe disabilities often experience complex communication disorders. Deficits in communication and language are so basic that they affect many other skill areas including all aspects of social-emotional development, language/literacy development, educational achievement and participation in society. Children with ?labels? such as autism, multiple disabilities, deafblindness and global developmental delay may exhibit a perplexing mosaic of strengths and apparent deficits related to communication skills that are not well portrayed by typical assessment instruments. Without a comprehensive and consistent assessment protocol, appropriate intervention is elusive, and monitoring of educational progress is not possible. Appropriate communication assessment, intervention and monitoring is especially lacking for children with severe disabilities who are nonverbal or minimally verbal.
A recently concluded Steppingstones Phase 1 project has funded the development, adaptation, refinement and evaluation of an innovative technological approach designed to provide appropriate assessment of communication skills in children with severe disabilities. Www.communicationmatrix.org is an online assessment tool for evaluating the communication skills of children at the earliest stages of communication that is based on the valid and reliable Communication Matrix (Rowland, 1990, 1996, 2004). The new e-tool is designed to be used by parents and teachers collaboratively. The Phase 1 project has vastly improved and expanded this website, increased its user appeal and enhanced its educational utility. The web site has been beta-tested and evaluated by parent and professional users, with overwhelmingly positive results. A custom report feature, that includes the generation of educational goals, is now included n the available functions.
The purpose of the proposed Phase 2 project is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the online Communication Matrix to achieve immediately meaningful child-level outcomes in the form of generating appropriate educational goals related to communication. Activities will target EI/ECSE in Year 1, Grades K-5 in Year 2 and Grades 6-12 in Year 3. Professional and parent participant pairs will be randomly assigned to either a treatment group (using the online Matrix to assess target children and generate educational goals for them) or a no-treatment group (using other methods employed by their school systems). Outcome measures include: a) ratings of IEP/IFSP goals by independent professional raters who are blind to condition; b) parent satisfaction with their child?s IEP/IFSP goals; c) professional satisfaction with using the Matrix to generate IEP/IFSP goals; d) fidelity of implementation for treatment groups; and e) follow-up data on the degree to which professionals continue to use the Matrix. Collaborative relationships with potential vendors and disseminators will be developed and marketing efforts implemented. This proposal targets children of all ages (including children birth-3rd grade) who inhabit any area of the United States and who experience severe communication disorders.
Keyword(s):
communication, assessment, complex communication needs, severe disabilities
