Learning to Make Change Via Virtual Money Manipulative, System of Least Prompts, and Modeling Online

Abstract

Individuals engage in purchasing skills on a daily basis. Regardless of the curricular focus of secondary students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD; i.e., academic or functional), possession of life skills is important. In this single case design study, researchers examined the provision of online instruction to three U.S. high school students with IDD learning to solve making change with coins problems. Researchers provided students with an intervention package consisting of a virtual money manipulative, modeling, and the system of least prompts (SLP). A functional relation was suggested between the dependent variable of independent accuracy and the intervention package. Students also increased their percentage of task analysis steps completed independently following receipt of the intervention package. All three students maintained their percentage of task analysis steps completed independently and their independent accuracy was higher than baseline. However, generalization to real-life experiences was not examined.