Teletraining to Teach Communication Partners to Support Students With Multiple Disabilities Including Cortical Visual Impairment and Emerging Symbolic Communication in Communicating Choices

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to investigate the impact of a teletraining to teach adult communication partners the “Communicating Choices–Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI)” strategy to support participation for students with multiple disabilities. Method: A nonconcurrent, multiple-probe, across-participants design was imple­mented with four adult communication partner (i.e., speech-language pathologist, paraeducators, and parent) and student dyads to determine the effects of a tele­training administered over a video-calling platform on the partner’s implementa­tion of the substeps from the Communicating Choice–CVI strategy. Dyads com­pleted a randomly predetermined number of baseline sessions, two teletraining sessions to instruct the partners in the strategy, and five intervention probes. Results: Results of the study indicated that communication partners success­fully implemented an increased number of the strategy substeps following two short teletraining sessions and that all students communicated choices in every opportunity when they were provided with a structured opportunity. Communi­cation partners reported that the strategy was successful for the students and that the strategy could be applied to other contexts or students. Conclusions: This study provides evidence for the importance of communica­tion partner training for students with complex needs in domains such as vision and communication. Furthermore, the Communicating Choices–CVI strategy may lead to increased opportunities for academic participation, social engage­ment, and self-determination for students whose opportunities to take on active roles in educational settings are often severely restricted.