Site Mission, Policies, and Limitations

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Mission

The basic mission of this website is severalfold: (a) to get some but not all of Precision Teaching up on the web, (b) to show how this can be done and to suggest some possibilities, and (c) to be a repository of standard chart scientific and technological resources for educational and illustrative purposes. The overall goal is to promote communication about educational and behavioral science and technology.

As with my other, current websites, this site is intended soley for noncommercial, educational reference and illustrative purposes only. Nothing is offered for sale here, nor are any warranties, explicit or implied, made with respect to any of the information posted on this website. That is in keeping with my intent that this site become and remain a scientific and technological resource.

Policies

I will put on this site information that I believe exists in the public domain, or which is my own material. This is based on my own understanding of the Copyright laws, of course. Those laws tend to protect the form in which information is conveyed, and which were intended by the framers of the U.S. Constitution to promote the useful Arts and Sciences.

As far as quoting material developed by others goes, the Fair Use guidelines will apply here.

Feel free to use the information presented on this site for your own use.

As mentioned above, the goal for this site is to promote communication, not to hinder it. Accordingly, I welcome helpful and useful feedback and comments from users. If you want something added to the site that you have written or generated, let me know. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, please send those to me as well. I cannot guarantee that suggestions will be followed, though! If you have flames, ad hominems, or destructive advice, please keep that to yourself. If you want a site done differently, consider starting your own.

Limitations

This site is not and will not be a site for the teaching of Precision Teaching or of how to chart using Standard Celeration Charts. To adequately teach requires up front instruction, behavioral objectives, and then instruction at the point of time when responses need to be made, responses, and differential feedback following responses. Likewise, instruction requires sufficient practice. Moreover, important considerations such as instructional design apply.

For example, to teach Learning Pictures would, at the very least, entail definition of the variable attributes of each picture, and the critical attributes. Examples and nonexamples, taking into account variations in each, would need to be developed. Practice Sheets or SAFMEDS would need to be designed, developed, and produced. Test questions would also need to be produced. To teach a single Learning Picture might entail a series of SAFMEDS cards or instructional frames with different variations of the same picture (e.g., with longer or shorter celeration lines, with the celeration lines at different frequency levels and at different locations on the chart, with or without the frequency dots added in, with frequency dots only, with different angles of the two lines, with different spreads between the two lines, with different levels of bounce in the data, with different colors for the lines, and so on). For nonexamples, other learning pictures could be used, but also the bounds between one picture and another would need to be determined. For instance, what is the difference, in terms of critical attributes, between a "crossover jaws" picture and a "climb" picture?

To teach the chart requires, also, for instance, that one learn how to read charts, how to identify the features of the chart, how to accurately place dots on a chart, how and where to draw Record Floors, what an Accuracy Ratio is and how to compute it, what the different methods are for drawing celeration lines (e.g., least squares vs. quarter intersect vs. freehand) and so on. That can best be carried out by way of workshops, small mini-courses, and books and manuals written for that purpose. Workshops and materials for this purpose exist, and I direct the interested reader to them further on this page.

This site will likewise not be a complete or thorough reference guide. Right now, that is beyond the scope I have envisioned for this site. To develop such a reference guide would represent a large undertaking. However, if the way can be pointed in the general direction of a new, more complete reference guide, then one of the goals for this site will have been met.

Teaching the Chart

Several ABA workshops exist that teach the Standard Celeration Chart or that teach some basics of Precision Teaching. Two workshops in particular, each of which I have taken or assisted in, are listed below. The materials offered in these workshops may be available from their respective instructors, outside the confines of said workshops. Please contact the instructors of the workshops to find out what they have available. This information is also on the "teaching" page.

Association for Behavior Analysis. Workshop # 10. 5/26/2000 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Maryland A

Standard Celeration Chart Reading and Charting

OGDEN R. LINDSLEY, Ph.D. (Behavior Research Company), John O. Cooper, Barry D. Morgenstern (Ohio State University), Michael Fabrizio, Alison L. Moors (Morningside Academy), Shala Ali-Rosales (University of North Texas), Richard M. Kubina, Jr. (Clarion University), Giordana Malabello (The Australian Optimal Learning Centre)

Description - This workshop teaches how to read and chart daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly Standard Celeration Charts. The dramatic learning results produced by Morningside Academy, Malcolm X College, and Free Operant Autism Treatment have attracted renewed attention to this powerful learning and performance analysis tool. Daily frequency monitoring has proven highly successful in applied behavior analysis, precision teaching and organizational performance management. Standard Celeration Charts were developed to easily track frequency growth, changes in growth, variance, outliers, and to project outcomes. This repeat of the very highly rated workshop at ABA '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, and '99 was requested by participants unable to attend those years.

Objectives - Throughout the entire workshop instructors coach as participants: Read frequencies, celerations, celeration differences, turns, jumps, bounces, and outlier probabilities from Standard Celeration Charts at 60 per minute. Chart frequencies on daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly Standard Celeration Charts accurately at 10 per minute.

Activities - Morning: Moving in a chart room and drawing a chart from scratch overcome fear and develop standard chart feeling. Paced choral reading at 60 per minute of frequencies, celerations, turns, jumps, bounces, and outlier probabilities from 16 different Standard Celeration Chart practice sheets. Afternoon: Each participant charts from spreadsheets on daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly charts at 10 dots per minute. Coaches assist the instant a participant hesitates. Singing fun chart songs lightens the load. Participants are shown how to continue daily charting practice on their own to reach fluency above 30 dots correct per minute. Unique Features: From 1965 to 1994 Standard Celeration workshops taught dot dropping before chart reading. Chart reading was not practiced. This workshop's first unique feature teaches participants to read charts fluently before putting dots on charts. Practice sheets with 100 small (3/8" x 1/2") Standard Celeration Charts help produce rapid, paced, choral chart reading. After having read frequencies, celerations, bounces, turns, and jumps fluently at 60 per minute, accurate charting at 10 dots per minute comes rapidly. The second unique feature provides a coach for every four participants as they practice throughout the workshop. Participants have help at their side.

Audience - Graduate students, faculty, researchers, and consultants who have heard about the power of Standard Celeration Charting, but had no opportunity to learn how. ABA members from outside the U.S. find a coach at their side helps clear language difficulty. Here is your chance! This proven, top-rated, entirely hands-on, workshop is fast paced, is fun, and it works!

Members - $130 Non-Members - $145

Please refer to the Association for Behavior Analysis's website at http://www.wmich.edu/aba/ 12/20/08: This link is out-of-date. For current info on ABA-International, please see http://www.abainternational.org for further information regarding how to sign up and participate. A complete year 2000 ABA convention program can be found there as well.

Association for Behavior Analysis. Workshop # 31. 5/27/2000 8:00 AM - 11:00 AM. Delaware A

How to Develop, Produce and Use SAFMEDS

STEPHEN GRAF, Ph.D. (Youngstown State University)

Description - SAFMEDS, an acronym for "Say All Fast Minute Every Day Shuffled," represents a procedure to promote fluency in verbal behavior developed by Ogden Lindsley 20 years ago. Learners see information on the front of a card and attempt to say a brief response that can be found on the back. Use of the technique provides an easy way to monitor the learning of large numbers of facts and concepts. Use provides enhanced retention of material with better application to new material, as well as focused performance under pressure.

Objectives - Participants should be able to: develop sets of SAFMEDS that conform to the rules provided for content areas in which the participants teach or train; produce SAFMEDS masters from the MSWord templates provided them as part of their materials; reproduce sets of SAFMEDS for students or trainees; and implement use of SAFMEDS in various settings, structuring practice timings to interface smoothly within classroom or training sessions.

Activities - Participants will practice with conversion of different types of information to SAFMEDS; discuss using the templates provided to produce SAFMEDS masters to be printed as decks on card stock; discuss alternatives form making SAFMEDS available to students, clients or trainees; demonstrate how to run timings with small or large groups; and discuss how to incorporate SAFMEDS into larger patterns of learning.

Audience - Participants should either have competent subject matter repertoires and be interested in promoting fluent verbal behavior in specialty areas for students, clients or employees they teach or train; or want to improve their own repertoires in a content area.

Members - $70 Non-Members - $85

Please refer to the Association for Behavior Analysis' website at http://www.wmich.edu/aba/ 12/20/08: This link is out-of-date. For current info on ABA-International, please see http://www.abainternational.org for further information regarding how to sign up and participate. A complete year 2000 ABA convention program can be found there as well.

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