A Preliminary Evaluation of a Digital Token Economy to Increase Student Engagement during Group Teletherapy

Shortly following the temporary nationwide school dismissal amid COVID-19, the current exploratory case-study evaluated the feasibility of two engagement strategies delivered during group teletherapy: Class Dojo and opportunities to respond (OTR). Three elementary students with emotional and behavioral difficulties participated. An A-B-A design was used to evaluate the effects of Class Dojo on student engagement with therapist-delivered OTRs. Due to one student’s poor response to the contingency, an A-B-C design was used to evaluate the additive effect of student-delivered OTRs on his engagement. Results indicated moderate to high rates of student attendance, and consistently high rates of engagement for two students. When students delivered OTRs, the student who initially struggled to engage demonstrated an increase in engagement. Practical issues are discussed and recommendations are considered for future research on increasing student engagement during online settings.

Adjusting Intervention Intensity to Support Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Special education and related professionals often understand the importance of adhering to intervention procedures (i.e., fidelity), but may be less familiar with concepts of intervention intensity. In some cases, professionals may correctly apply an intervention, but with insufficient intensity. This can result in an intervention failing to produce the expected benefit, which can add to student frustration, lost resources, and teacher burnout. Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often benefit from intensive intervention that contains high rates of opportunities to respond. This article provides an overview of a practical guide for adjusting intervention intensity for students with ASD through a three-step process that includes identifying when to adjust intensity along with three ways to adjust intervention intensity. Additional considerations are included for analyzing student responses for data-based decision-making.

Opportunities to Respond for Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in Inclusive Classrooms

Students who are actively engaged in learning have a higher probability of academic and behavioral success in the classroom. One effective teaching practice that increases student engagement is providing students with frequent opportunities to respond (OTR). This article provides practitioners with a range of OTR strategies that include verbal, non-verbal, and partner responses. In addition, recommendations are provided on how these strategies can be effectively implemented in inclusive classrooms to increase engagement of students with school-based behavior problems, including those with and at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders.

Implementing Individual Opportunities to Respond in Online Teaching Environments

Teacher-provided opportunities to respond are a powerful strategy for improving behavior and academic outcomes of students with disabilities. However, online instruction makes opportunities to respond more challenging to implement. For the purposes of this article, online teaching refers to synchronous instruction taking place via video conferencing software (e.g., Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Canvas Conferences, Blackboard Collaborate). This article presents strategies teachers can use to elicit individual responses from students through oral responses, response cards, and action responses.

Comparing spatial data sources for cycling studies – a review

Cycling is integral for developing human-scale cities. To attract more people on bikes, urban planning and research share a need to better understand the spatial, temporal and social aspects of cycling. Novel data sources provide new opportunities to respond to this need, but understanding their strengths and weaknesses is crucial to facilitate the use of the most fitting data. We reviewed common cycling data sources and carried out a survey among NECTAR researchers and their networks of experts to compare the suitability of different data for answering some of the most common questions on cycling. Our results highlight the need for careful consideration of data availability, representativeness and fitness-for-use. The lack of cycling data and access to it is still identified as a main limitation among several of the reviewed data sources, both novel and traditional. We call for increased emphasis on responsible data sharing and open science practices whenever possible.

Peers as Change Agents

This chapter details the many advantages of utilizing peers as change agents in behavioral interventions, including being a readily available and free resource, increasing opportunities to respond, promoting generalization, being socially valid and culturally relevant, increasing student engagement with intervention, providing access to natural reinforcement, promoting social skill development, and supporting the development of peer social relationships. The chapter also positions peer-mediated interventions as relevant to the development of children and highlights the value and usefulness of identifying the behaviors the intervention is targeting and then emphasizing the importance of the peer’s role. This chapter also discusses the research supporting the effectiveness of peers as interventionists, indicating that they can be reliably trained to carry out interventions in schools.

Engaging with Uncertainty and Complexity: A Secondary Analysis of Primary Care Responses to Intimate Partner Violence

Complex problems generate uncertainty. The number and diversity of interactions between different health professionals, perspectives, and components of the problem makes predicting an outcome impossible. In effort to reduce the uncertainty of intimate partner violence interventions, health systems have developed standardized guidelines and protocols. This paper presents a secondary analysis of 17 New Zealand primary care professional narratives on intimate partner violence as a health issue. We conducted a complexity-informed content analysis of participant narratives to explore uncertainty in greater depth. This paper describes three ways primary care professionals interact with uncertainty: reducing uncertainty, realizing inherent uncertainty, and engaging with uncertainty. We found dynamic patterns of interaction between context and the experience of uncertainty shape possible response options. Primary care professionals that probed into uncertainty generated new understanding and opportunities to respond to intimate partner violence.

How does a (Smart) Age-Friendly Ecosystem Look in a Post-Pandemic Society?

COVID-19 has impacted not only the health of citizens, but also the various factors that make up our society, living environments, and ecosystems. This pandemic has shown that future living will need to be agile and flexible to adapt to the various changes in needs of societal populations. Digital technology has played an integral role during COVID-19, assisting various sectors of the community, and demonstrating that smart cities can provide opportunities to respond to many future societal challenges. In the decades ahead, the rise in aging populations will be one of these challenges, and one in which the needs and requirements between demographic cohorts will vary greatly. Although we need to create future smart age-friendly ecosystems to meet these needs, technology still does not feature in the WHO eight domains of an age-friendly city. This paper extends upon Marston and van Hoof’s ‘Smart Age-friendly Ecosystem’ (SAfE) framework, and explores how digital technology, design hacking, and research approaches can be used to understand a smart age-friendly ecosystem in a post-pandemic society. By exploring a series of case studies and using real-life scenarios from the standpoint of COVID-19, we propose the ‘Concept of Age-friendly Smart Ecologies (CASE)’ framework. We provide an insight into a myriad of contemporary multi-disciplinary research, which are capable to initiate discussions and bring various actors together with a positive impact on future planning and development of age-friendly ecosystems. The strengths and limitations of this framework are outlined, with advantages evident in the opportunity for towns, regions/counties, provinces, and states to take an agile approach and work together in adopting and implement improvements for the greater benefits of residents and citizens.