A review of the article, Teaching Chained Tasks to Students with Intellectual Disabilities by using Video Prompting in Small Group Discussion

This article discusses a study aimed at determining whether video prompting is effective for enabling students with intellectual disabilities to acquire chained tasks during small group instruction, at what level these skills are maintained, and whether these skills can be applied outside of a teaching environment. Video prompting is when a respondent watches a video and actively responds to the prompt in the video. It does not require the entire video to be watched before beginning the task. The video may be continued or repeated, depending on the response. Chained tasks are skills that consist of multiple single step behaviors performed in a successive order.

There were three participants, aged 11 to 13, who took part in the study. The participants were all students with moderate intellectual disabilities. They were all able to focus on a task for five minutes, imitate, and follow instructions. Their environment was a classroom with desks arranged in a half-moon formation. The class always took place from 10:00am to 10:45am. Three skills, or chained tasks, were taught: peeling an orange, folding paper into the shape of a puppy, and stitching. During each lesson, every step of a task was displayed on the video and the students were also given verbal prompting. Correct responses were provided positive rewards and incorrect responses were corrected with the instructor’s physical prompts. After the training sessions, the students were able to accurately apply the skills they learned for another experimenter. After six months had passed, the students were able to apply the skills with 85% accuracy, which shows that the students were able to maintain the skills at an acceptable level over that period of time.

There are already studies that suggest one-to-one training with video prompting is effective, however this study shows some important advantages to using small groups. One benefit is that instructors can teach more than one student at a time, which requires fewer personnel and less time. Students also develop more functional skills in a less restrictive environment. By working in small groups, students also develop appropriate skills for peer communication and may acquire extra knowledge from observing other students within the group.

This article outlines some great points for using small groups with video prompting, considering the students are suited for group work and appropriately grouped based on abilities. All of the students in the study were of similar age and ability, in relation to one another. This would not be as effective if the group was too large or if the students varied too much in abilities, both mentally and physically. Small group work seems to be advantageous for both students and teachers, considering it takes less time and manpower to teach and students learn and retain the information effectively. There are also the added social benefits of communicating with others and learning from peers. Considering the students and environment is appropriate for training through video prompting, this is a great teaching method and an effective example of modeling and use of visual supports.

Aykut, Ç., Dagseven Emecen, D., Dayi, E., & Karasu, N. (2014). Teaching chained tasks to students with intellectual disabilities by using video prompting in small group instruction. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 14(3), 1082-1087.