Effect of a Computerized Individual Education Program (IEP) Writer on Time Savings and Quality

Abstract

This study compared the amount of time 42 special education teachers in the state of Hawaii took to write handwritten and computer-generated Individual Education Programs (IEPS) after 12 hours of training on “IEP Writer,” a word processing method. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups. Group 1 wrote IEPs using their newly learned computer skills and Group 2 wrote IEPs by writing them out by hand. It was hypothesized that the computer method would take significantly less time and the quality of the computer-generated IEP would be significantly higher. Both hypotheses were compared by t-tests. Results showed: 1) The computer group took significantly less time to write their IEPs. 2) The quality of the computer generated IEP was significantly higher than the handwritten IEP.