Tutoring Buddy
Study: Volpe et al. (2011)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

Students in this study were not responsive to class-wide peer tutoring (K-PALS)

Describe how students were identified as being at risk for academic failure (AI) or as having emotional/behavioral difficulties (BI):

Students were identified as being at risk for academic failure through flat response on weekly Letter Sound Fluency Assessments.

ACADEMIC INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• below the 30th percentile on local or national norm, or
• identified disability related to the focus of the intervention?

%

BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• emotional disability label,
• placed in an alternative school/classroom,
• non-responsive to Tiers 1 and 2, or
• designation of severe problem behaviors on a validated scale or through observation?

%

Please describe the study design:

Outcomes for letter sound fluency (primary DV) were evaluated via a multiple baseline design across yoked pairs of students. Baseline consisted of class-wide peer tutoring (CWPT) administered two-three times per week. Phase B consisted of the CWPT + Tutoring Buddy. Tutoring Buddy was administered three times per week.

Clarify and provide a detailed description of the treatment in the submitted program/intervention:

Tutoring Buddy was delivered via a laptop computer. Graduate student interventionists administered the intervention 2-3 times per week. Using Tutoring Buddy, two known and four unknown letter sounds, as determined by performance during the pre-intervention assessment (i.e., unknown letter sounds were those that students articulated incorrectly, and known letter sounds were those that students articulated correctly) were selected for intervention, regardless of whether they had been rehearsed during prior sessions. Continuous sounds (e.g., e and v) were targeted for intervention first, and letters with similar characteristics (e.g., b and d) were rehearsed during different sessions whenever possible. During each intervention session students were presented with the first targeted unknown sound and their parent modeled the sound corresponding to the letter (e.g., This letter makes the sound /m/, like the first sound in ‘mmmmmop…mop.’ What sound?). Once the student made the correct sound the interventionist advanced to the incremental rehearsal screen wherein a string of 14 letters were presented in an incremental rehearsal sequence i.e., first unknown, first known, first unknown, first known, second known, first unknown, first known, second known, third known, first unknown, first known, second known, third known, fourth known (see example in Figure 1 on page 335). Interventionists provided immediate error corrections for any errors made by the student. Once the first sequence was completed, a second unknown letter sound was introduced just as the first. However, the first unknown became the first known and the fourth unknown was removed.

Clarify what procedures occurred during the control/baseline condition (third, competing conditions are not considered; if you have a third, competing condition [e.g., multi-element single subject design with a third comparison condition], in addition to your control condition, identify what the competing condition is [data from this competing condition will not be used]):

During baseline, all students received CWPT as described above and were administered the letter sound fluency probes one time per week.

Please describe how replication of treatment effect was demonstrated (e.g., reversal or withdrawal of intervention, across participants, across settings)

Effects for the first pair of students (charted in separate time series) were replicated for the second pair of students in a multiple baseline design.

Please indicate whether (and how) the design contains at least three demonstrations of experimental control (e.g., ABAB design, multiple baseline across three or more participants).

This study contains only a single replication, though for a pair of students. We chose to yoke students because they clearly were in need of attention and we did not want to delay intervention.

If the study is a multiple baseline, is it concurrent or non-concurrent?

Concurrent

How was the program delivered?

Individually
Small Group
Classroom

Study measures are classified as targeted, broader, or administrative data according to the following definitions:

• Targeted measures
  Assess outcomes, such as competencies or skills, that the program was directly targeted to improve.
  • In the academic domain, targeted measures typically are not the very items taught but rather novel items structured similarly to the content addressed in the program. For example, if a program taught word-attack skills, a targeted measure would be decoding of pseudo words. If a program taught comprehension of cause-effect passages, a targeted measure would be answering questions about cause-effect passages structured similarly to those used during intervention, but not including the very passages used for intervention.
  • In the behavioral domain, targeted measures evaluate aspects of external or internal behavior the program was directly targeted to improve and are operationally defined.
• Broader measures
  Assess outcomes that are related to the competencies or skills targeted by the program but not directly taught in the program.
  • In the academic domain, if a program taught word-level reading skill, a broader measure would be answering questions about passages the student reads. If a program taught calculation skill, a broader measure would be solving word problems that require the same kinds of calculation skill taught in the program.
  • In the behavioral domain, if a program taught a specific skill like on-task behavior in one classroom, a broader measure would be on-task behavior in another setting.
• Administrative data measures apply only to behavioral intervention tools and are measures such as office discipline referrals (ODRs) and graduation rates, which do not have psychometric properties as do other, more traditional targeted or broader measures.

If you have excluded a variable or data that are reported in the study being submitted, explain the rationale for exclusion:

Letter Sound Fluency was the dependent variable for this study. Baseline data were not collected for LSE, but scores from this measure are charted for the intervention phase.