Webinar Registration Page

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This is a "pay what you can" webinar (from $15-$40). If you're not already a TAGteach member or have not yet had a free trial membership, you'll get 1 free month in the TAGteach Membership.

NOTE: this is 1.5 hour webinar

Would you like to wow your learners and your colleagues with your next level shaping ninja skills?

Do you ever wonder how the master teachers and trainer manage to teach incredibly complex behaviors? 

The answer is: one step at a time. 

The most efficient and fun way to teach a complex behavior is to break it down into small pieces, teach the pieces in isolation and then put the pieces together to form the final goal behavior. In this webinar you'll learn how to transfer the action taught in isolation into the final goal behavior and you'll learn how to practice this skill. 

FOCUS ON MOVEMENTS, NOT OUTCOMES

When teaching, we often focus on outcomes (the completion of a behavior or task). For example, outcomes could include a cat that is fully inside a travel carrier, a child having his shoes on his feet and tied in bows, or a dog that is wearing her harness.

However, understanding the actions, or movements, that a learner must do to accomplish a particular outcome is essential for effective teaching. Focusing on actions will give you new ideas for starting points and help you see more approximations that you can reinforce.

ISOLATE COMPONENT ACTIONS

In addition, for many teaching goals, it is faster and easier to teach actions out of the final context and to use settings or props that make actions more intuitive for the learner. Once a learner is fluent at the core actions that are needed for a task, these actions can be transferred to new contexts and combined together to create the final behavior.

USING PORTL TO PRACTICE

In this webinar, we'll look in depth at the concept of “transferring actions.” We'll explore how to practice this concept using the shaping game PORTL and examine some real-life examples showing how the idea of transferring actions can be used to create better shaping plans and expedite learning. Finally, Mary will share some general rules and strategies that will help you use the idea of transferring actions to improve your shaping. 

PORTL is the Portable Operant Research Training Lab. In layman's terms it's a fun game to help you improve your behavior shaping skills. Shaping is part art and part science and it's a critical skill for all teachers and trainers. It's unfortunately not something that you've probably been taught explicitly. 

PORTL WEBINAR PART 1

Mary Hunter, one of the creators of PORTL explained the basics of shaping and of the game, showed us how to play and did a live demonstration with someone from the audience in a previous webinar. You will get the opportunity to purchase the recording of this for only $10 when you register using the Register button on this page.

Please note that this is a 1.5 hour webinar

Topics include:

-- how to separate actions from outcomes

-- how to teach component actions in isolation from the final context

-- how to use settings and props to make learning more intuitive

-- how use PORTL to practice the skills of transferring isolated actions into the final goal behavior

--  real life examples with people and animals

-- general rules and strategies for transferring isolated actions into the final goal behavior

This will be recorded and all registrants will have access to the recording.

No CEUs are provided

Mary Hunter earned an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Chicago and a master's degree in behavior analysis from the University of North Texas. She teaches people and their pets, working mainly with dogs and horses. In addition, Mary serves as president of the Art and Science of Animal Training. In 2019, Mary and Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz published their first book, PORTL: The Portable Operant Research and Teaching Lab. Mary’s research interests include studying the process of shaping and finding better ways to teach people to train animals. She is a full member of the Association for Behavior Analysis International and has presented research at the organization’s annual convention.