Stephen
Bolt
Behavior
Tracker
Executive
Summary
Description
of Business
My wife is a special education
teacher at a local elementary school. She frequently has to
do observations on students to monitor their behavior in class. Currently
she uses just a paper/pencil system to track whether or not a student is on
task or off task at 15 second intervals for a 15 minute observation. She
also tracks whether or not a comparison student is on task or off task.
She records what activities the student is engaged in and makes appropriate
notes. After she has recorded all of this, she then has to transfer the data to
an electronic format and then file in a folder she keeps on hand for each
student. Doing it with pencil and paper makes it hard to track progress over
time. Difficulty also exists in constantly looking at a watch or phone timer,
looking at the students, and then recording on a hard copy.
Overview
of System
I created an excel program with a
form that can be used to record the behavioral data for both the target and
comparison student. The form has tickers that are clicked during each 15 second
interval for on task or off task behavior, as well as compliant or noncompliant
behavior towards teacher instructions. I have also included a timer on the
sheet that is controlled from “Start”, “Stop”, and “Reset” buttons on the form.
This allows more efficient recording by avoiding the use of another device such
as a phone, clock, or watch. The system timer alerts the recorder in red at the
interval marks, along with a sound alerting to “Observe Behavior.” Other
important information is recorded on the form, including the student name,
date, homeroom teacher, observer name, activities engaged in and observer
comments. When the observation is finished, all of the data is imported into
the spreadsheet, along with calculated percentages of performance. Additionally,
a pivot table is updated on another sheet every time data is recorded and saved.
Write-up
Excel File
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