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Student Behavior Modification Application

Capstone Project

CST 499 - Directed Group Capstone

Cal State Monterey Bay

Carlos Sanchez
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Table of Contents

Part I ………………………………………………………………………………… 2

Part II ………………………………………………………………………………… 10

Part III …………………………………………………………………………….…… 12

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Part I

Introduction

Student Behavior Intervention Application (SBI) is the name of the application that I am

developing. The application is geared towards the education community and people that work

with young children with the purpose being to provide an additional resource to educators

dealing with tier 2 and tier 3 behavior intervention cases. It provides them with a digital means of

replicating the tried and true behavior intervention techniques while providing them with

additional student data.

The intention of the application is to provide educators, as well as any person that might

work young students, with a digital equivalent of the traditional paper and pencil intervention

techniques that most likely are already using in their classrooms. The intent is to make an easy

transition to digital data keeping while simultaneously giving teachers and students a formal

intervention tool they may utilize in place of traditional paper and pencil tools. Though the

reproduction and compilation of a range of physical intervention techniques is a big goal of the

application, the other major purpose it serves is to provide teachers with a go-to source for

student data. The application will allow encompass the student management portion of

behavioral intervention alongside the note taking and data documenting aspects or tiered

intervention techniques that are regularly utilized in individualized student education plan

meetings.

Teachers that keep records on tier 2 and tier 3 intervention cases usually have it in

various sources ranging from computer files and spreadsheets to paper logs. Many teachers do
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not have the time or energy to even keep this data for more than a week and are unable to use the

data to recognize trends. The Student Behavior Intervention application provides a solution to

this problem. The majority of students with behavior issues already have student support teams

attempting to address their needs through individualized education plans and such, this

application will give these teams better insight into how to further meet the student’s needs.
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Project Goals and Objectives:

Goals:

● Create an effective way for teachers to track behavior in Student Behavior Intervention

Application (SBI)

● Provide teachers with digital equivalents to traditional paper and pencil intervention

Strategies for Tier 2 and Tier 3 Students

● Teachers feel confident substituting SBI for traditional intervention techniques

● Avoid making an over complicated product that does not provide teachers with the

aforementioned data and intervention techniques

Objectives:

● Develop digital equivalents to 2 effective behavior intervention strategies

○ Create structured timer with intervals

○ Create positive reinforcement chart with customizable images

● Allow for student profiles/sections with specific student notes

● Create database for storing individual student data

● Create data center for accessing individual student data

● Allow for teachers and students to set student behavior goals

● Behavior log for more in depth teacher notes

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Environmental Scan

There are various apps on the market that aim at curbing negative classroom behavior and

tracking classroom activities. One of the more popular ones being Class Dojo. Though Class

Dojo has undergone a shift in recent years from a classroom management app to more of a social

media platform for teachers and parents. The prevalence of the app amongst the teaching school

age community is evidence from a quick google search for “classroom management apps” or

“PBIS apps” and with good reason. There are a range of studies singing its praises. On such

study by Krach, McCreery, and Rimel (2016) from Florida State University determined that

Class Dojo provided significantly more data in general and more reliable data than other systems

reviewed. Though the app is famous as a classroom management tool, it is best used with the

whole classrooms as a tier 1 behavior intervention tracking tool.

A team from Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development was

working on a behavior intervention app that geared towards tier 2 and 3 behavior intervention

cases in special education by the name of MoBeGo or Monitoring Behavior on the Go (“App

will help students self-monitor and improve classroom behavior", 2017). The article suggests the

team would create a product that would allow for students to “improve self-regulation” and that

would “take all the drudge work out of” keeping track of behavior. The app was on a was to be

pilot tested over 3 years but I was not able to find any further mention of it online outside of this

article.

Lastly, the I-Connect app came up a couple times during my environmental scan. The app

was another one geared towards the special education population, specifically those with autism.

One study by Crutchfield, Mason, Chambers, Wills, & Mason (2014) used the study as a
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substitute for traditional self-monitoring and found students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

(ASD) to have a “marked decrease in stereotypy with the introduction of the app.

Though a variety of apps are present in the education field, none serve the same audience

as the SBI Application, teachers and students who need tier 2 or tier 3 behavior intervention in

the general education population. The aforementioned apps also serve to highlight the

willingness of the community to integrate new technologies that may act as more effective

substitutes for research based practices.

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Stakeholders and Community

As previously mentioned, the Student Behavior Intervention Application will be geared

towards teachers who may be currently using or intend to use tier 2 and tier 3 behavioral

intervention strategies with their students and the students who will benefit from the application.

The nature of the SBI application is to act as a more effective digital emulation of the tools

teachers are already using in their classrooms with the added benefit of being a more effective

means of recording and keeping data. The application acts as a resource for teachers struggling

with behavior cases that have not responded to tier 1 intervention techniques and is based on

research based practices that teachers already use in their classrooms. If used effectively over a

desired period of time, the application will provide teachers with a data source for student

support teams to analyze and use for decision making in behavior management plans.

The barrier of entry is minimal and teachers only stand to lose their physical reward

systems or equivalent paper based behavior tracking systems. Substituting the SBI application

into the usual routine of giving a student a physical token or setting an egg timer for a designated

desired amount of structured break time may be unusual at first, but will eventually become

easier to use and less cumbersome than using paper and pencil techniques. Teachers may even

choose to use the application for further record keeping, personal notes, and/or a means of

providing non-verbal cues that may further increase their productivity and organization of

student information in the classroom. Furthermore, the data the application will accumulate on

student behavior is something that might be much more difficult to keep track of physically or by

other means.
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Approach/Methodology

Technically, the project will serve as a means of utilizing and integrating ideas that I

previously only learned in self contained environments and have yet to implement outside of

class assignments. The requirements of the SBI application include the creation of databases,

creating user accounts for teachers and students, creating web based interfaces that can be

utilized in mobile applications and bringing together these things into a culminating, visually

appealing application that serves a range of purposes for a range of students and teachers.

As the SBI application intends to emulate research based practices for dealing with tier 2

and tier 3 behavior cases, it will be necessary to do the research required to effectively create the

digital versions of two strategies including a positive behavior reward system and a structured

break system that cater to the needs of teachers and are visually and sonically appealing to their

students.

As the application will need to be tested in the field, it will need to be completed or reach

a beta form before during the school year. Teachers will require enough time to learn to make

effective use of the app and all its features and use it for an amount of time that allows them to

give feedback and maybe even test out a second version of the application with changes made.

This time constraint of the course makes time management one of the greatest challenges I face

as it necessitates that I make effective use of the skills that I have already gained and split any

remaining time between learning new languages, learning to use new libraries and possibly

learning new software and the actual development process in order to create the best product for

the time that I have available.

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Part II

Ethical Considerations

As with any action research or or even project testing, there are various ethical

considerations. One such consideration that I have with my project is that it essentially requires

teachers to determine the students that most likely fall into the category of tier 2 and tier 3

behavior intervention cases. Though the testing of the application would not itself require human

subject research, teachers will be testing the application in a classroom full of students. By

testing the capabilities of the application and how it serves them in an educational setting, I am

essentially asking these educators to make students a large part of their focus, something that

would almost definitely draw further attention to these students. Though many of these students

are already under the microscope due to their behavior or some other factor, I’d hate for the

testing of the application to influence teachers’ perspective on the students. In order to mitigate

the potential for teachers giving ancillary negative (or positive) attention to these students,

teachers will choose students that may meet their requirements of being a tier 2/tier 3 behavior

student. As it is the beginning of the school year, I am hoping that this will not impact teachers

future relationships with their students and that they may benefit from using the Behavior

Modification Application.

By asking that teachers choose students that are already receiving tier 2 and/or tier 3

intervention, I will hopefully mitigate any negative ethical concerns. I will ask that teachers use

the application in place of traditional tier 2 and/or tier 3 intervention tools that they may already

be implementing with students. As the application is designed as a replacement for these

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traditional tier 2 and tier 3 intervention tools, substituting in the application for the tools they

may already be using will serve as a way to naturally make use of the application without

introducing any unnecessary additional variables that may affect the implementation of the

application.

Legal Considerations

When it comes to working with teachers, students and schools, there are a few legal

considerations. I will be asking that teachers and students use the application as a tier 2/ tier 3

intervention tool and in order for this to be the case I will have to get permission from the school

site to use the application. Many school districts have implemented an app approval process in

order to make sure that teachers are using applications that are appropriate for classroom use and

that are not encroaching on student or parent rights and privacy by using the application. I will

make sure to go through the district’s proper application approval process ahead of time by

submitting the required forms. Some school districts also require that the application that is being

used in the classroom have a privacy policy. If this is the case, I have researched the

requirements and will write a privacy policy that meets the requirements of AB1584, as is

requested by many school districts.

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Part III

Project Scope

Timeline/Budget

Timeline

Dates: Events:

8/25 - 9/1 Workspace Preparation and Overall Project Planning (i.e. environment

installations including preparation of databases and servers, user stories,

diagrams, use cases)

9/2 - 9/22 Project Development including UI, individual student profiles, structured

timer, positive reinforcement behavior log, student data view, student

database, behavior goals and log pages

9/22 - 10/4 Testing with target focus group; miscellaneous updates

10/5 - 10/18 Final changes, video and presentation preparation

Budget

Item: Cost:

Amazon EC2 Free Tier $0 -

3 Months of Wix/Corvid Premium Membership and Domain $13/month

Total: $39
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Resources Needed

● Javascript Framework

● Corvid Articles and Video References

● HTML and CSS

● AWS EC2

Milestones

❏ Workspace preparation

❏ Use Cases

❏ User stories

❏ Application Concept Diagram

❏ Development

❏ UI

❏ User and Student Profiles

❏ Intervention Strategies (Positive Reinforcement Behavior Log & Structure Daily

Timer)

❏ Student Behavior Goals and Log Pages

❏ Student Database

❏ Focus Group Testing

❏ Testing Survey

❏ Final Iterations

❏ Capstone Report Presentation

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Risks and Dependencies

Risks

The tools I will be using, AWS and Corvid by Wix.com, run the chance of extending the

development process. Time management and making use of the documentation that is available

for the tools as well as javascript and css document, will ensure that I am able to complete the

project with as little delay as possible. Creating a web app is the best choice for this project as

the testing will be done on both Android and iOS and the easiest means of access for all testers is

of course browser based. There is also the possibility of testing on the Chrome OS, so this may

also force me to develop a non mobile version of the application.

Educators with varying degrees of technological knowledge will be testing the

application, and this may also result in the risk of confusion if the UI is not easy to read and

utilize. The goal of utilizing Wix’s new Corvid dev tools is to develop an easy to read and easy

to use UI that will be helpful to even the most technologically deficient user.

Dependencies

Utilization of javascript frameworks will be an important part of the project. AWS

platform and EC2 will be integral to the development, but an emphasis will be placed on the use

of newly released Corvid development tools of wix.com for the front front end in order to make

the best use of the time allotted for the project. The tools are in a preview stage, therefore I will

be reading and employing the documentation and tutorials in order to complete the application.
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Final Deliverables

The final deliverable will be a Student Behavior Intervention web application accessible

through mobile browsers that allows for teachers and educators to create a profile for each of

their tier 2 and tier 3 behavioral intervention students. The application will have a user friendly

interface. It will allow the ability to utilize two different digital behavior intervention tools that

are digitized versions of traditional paper and pencil tools commonly used for tier 2 and tier 3

behavior intervention, a positive reinforcement chart and a daily structured timer. The app will

also allow for limited customization of these tools. Alongside the digitization of these

intervention strategies will be student profiles that will offer educators a place for student goal

logging and student data logs based on a backend database of student data collected from the

aforementioned intervention tools.

Usability Testing/Evaluation

After initial beta release of the project, the link will be published and made available to a

handful of educators at a local school site for preliminary testing and classroom usage. The

teachers will utilize the application for students whom they work with that may be in need of tier

2 or tier 3 level behavior intervention. After using the SBI Application with the students for the

previously agreed upon amount of time, teachers will evaluate the tool using a google form

survey. Questions on the survey will include:

● Was the SBI app easy to use? Why or why not?

● Was the SBI app effective as a tier 2/tier 3 intervention tool?

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● Would you continue to use the SBI app in place of traditional paper and pencil

intervention tools?

● What are some changes you would make to the SBI app?

Using the results of the survey, I will determine any final changes to make to the

application before delivery during the capstone presentation.

Team Members

Carlos Sanchez

● Only team member

● In charge of carrying out the whole development process and presenting the final

deliverable
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References

Crutchfield, S. A., Mason, R. A., Chambers, A., Wills, H. P., & Mason, B. A. (2014). Use of a
Self-monitoring Application to Reduce Stereotypic Behavior in Adolescents with
Autism: A Preliminary Investigation of I-Connect. ​Journal of Autism and Developmental
Disorders,​ ​45​(5), 1146-1155. doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2272-x

Krach, S. K., Mccreery, M. P., & Rimel, H. (2016). Examining Teachers’ Behavioral
Management Charts: A Comparison of Class Dojo and Paper-Pencil Methods.
Contemporary School Psychology,​ ​21​(3), 267-275. doi:10.1007/s40688-016-0111-0

Sevier, J., (2017, October 15). App will help students self-monitor and improve classroom
behavior. Retrieved from
https://wp0.vanderbilt.edu/ideas-in-action/2017/10/app-will-help-students-self-monitor-a
nd-improve-classroom-behavior/