Newsletter
Volume 28 | 2005 | Number 1
2004 International Grant Awards
The Board of the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis is very pleased to announce the winners of the 2004 International Development Grants.
Joseph J. Pear, Ph.D. (University of Manitoba, Canada)
The 2004 SABA International Development grant will be used to develop an on-line course in applied behavior analysis for University of Manitoba students as well as students from a variety of institutions and countries. The undergraduate-level course will be developed using a web-based Computer Assisted Personalized system of Instruction (WebCAPSI). Students will access the course from anywhere in the world simply by typing www.WebCAPSI.com into their Internet browser.
The course is designed using a computer-based version of Keller’s (1969) Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), with a focus on encouraging students to develop higher-order or critical thinking skills. The use of expository writing combined with peer review in a PSI computer-based course facilitates learning and increases critical thinking skills, while the flexibility of access allows students to complete course work at their own pace and convenience. A unique feature of the system is that students within a course may be peer reviewers (i.e., proctors) and receive credit for peer reviewing. The peer-review feature generates a high-degree of positive student interaction, regardless of location. Courses in several universities in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere will be merged using WebCAPSI. Students will receive credit for the course from any of the participating universities. The interactions between students of diverse backgrounds and cultures will enhance the educational experience. WebCAPSI archives all the data, permitting a detailed analysis of how students from different localities interact.
Yanqing Guo (Institute of Mental Health, Peking University, People’s Republic of China)
The International Development Grant will be used to develop a series of training sessions at the Institute of Mental Health, Peking University. There will be two kinds of sessions: one for professional training and one for parental training. The former will be focused on training graduate students in the Institute of Mental Health of Peking University. Courses will include Principles of Behavior, Behavioral Assessments and Interventions, Radical Behaviorism, and Applied Research Methods. Parental training will focus on parents with autistic children. ABA training methods have been very popular in the US for training children with autism, and there are many professionals engaged in such areas. However, in China, ‘applied behavior analysis’ is a new term for many professionals, even in psychology. Since parents with autistic children are in great need of such techniques, while professionals who are good at these techniques are scarce, we want first to train parents to train their children using ABA methods. Concurrently, professionals will be trained gradually to meet professional guidelines. The professional training sessions will not only educate professionals to provide support for parents with autistic children, but also will foster interest in different areas of applied behavior analysis.
Paolo Moderato, Ph.D. (University of Parma, Italy)
The 2004 international development grant will be used in the establishment of the Istituto Europeo per lo Studio del Comportamento Umano (IESCUM, or the European Institute for the Study of Human Behavior), a non-profit organization located in Parma, Italy. The Center will be dedicated to the scientific advancement of behavior analysis, promote research, and disseminate the results of research through an e-journal. Its model is the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. The aims of the Center are: a) promoting and supporting research in any field in which behavior analysis has demonstrated its efficacy; and b) disseminating the results of behavior analytic research (basic and applied) in different fields. The mean will be an on-line journal that publishes papers showing the most recent advances in behavior safety, organizational behavior management, special education, parenting, clinical psychology, e-learning, and so on, including theoretical and epistemological papers. The selection of papers for each topic will be made by an editor and supervised by an international advisory board. Each topic will be treated, in turn, in an issue of the digest. The first step of development of IESCUM will be in Italian and English, but contacts are in progress for Spanish and Portuguese, in light of the extraordinarily successful conference in Brazil.