Webinar Registration Page

Access four webinar recordings - 2 by Peggy and 2 by Mary on the topic of behavior shaping. In addition there's recorded Q&A session with Mary Hunter, Peggy Hogan and Joan Orr

If you've previously registered for this webinar, please login to view it  

 This is a "pay what you can" webinar (click register link for price options). 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.

Join us for this incredible learning opportunity with two behavior shaping superstars. This is a rare chance to meet and engage with both of these wonderful people AT THE SAME TIME  and to learn from them as they chat and answer your questions. Both Peggy and Mary are sure that you can learn the skills required to become an expert shaper. It's not a case of being "good with people" or "having a way with animals", it's a case of learning specific concrete skills. Bring your questions for Mary and Peggy and they'll offer you brilliant insight to help you on your way to improving your shping skills.

This is not a regular webinar! This is a 2 part offering: 

Firstly you'll get access to four webinar recordings - two by Peggy and two by Mary on the topic of shaping. Scroll down for overviews of these webinars.

Secondly you'll be able to join us live  to hear Mary and Peggy chat about these topics and to ask your questions about the topics covered in the webinars.

BONUS! When you register for this webinar bundle you'll get the option to purchase the webinar, Backchaining: The Key to Exceptional Training - with Joan Orr for only $10.

If you've previously purchased 3 or 4 of these webinars in the past, you'll be offered a discount code. It will show up here on this page. You'll need to be logged in to see it. If the LOGIN option shows in the top menu bar, then you're not logged in. Click on LOGIN and then return to this page and refresh to see the code.

Join us for a fun primer on one of the most important skills you need to be the most effective teacher you can be. This skill is shaping! Shaping is the creation of one behavior from another in approximations. Shaping is one of those techniques that can seem so easy, yet there are so many ways we can make the process easy or difficult for the learner, depending on how we do it. Part art and part science, shaping is a skill that you can develop and increase no matter where you are on your own teaching/learning journey. Shaping has evolved in significant ways over the years and what you'll learn about in this presentation is how to give maximum choice and control to the learner while minimizing frustration.

This presentation will be heavily focused on showing you videos of actual shaping sessions with animal and human learners.

Bob Bailey says "clicker training may be simple, but it's not easy."

I would say the same of shaping.

My name is Peggy Hogan and I've been a teacher of human and non-human species for my entire career (40 years.) I've also enjoyed teaching more than one discipline: piano/music and horse training. While the combination might seem a bit odd, my experience is that there are many similarities in how to shape the learner to learn complex sequences without creating frustration in the process. In this webinar I'll share and discuss video examples of how some of the shaping techniques I've learned as a musician applies to my non-human equine learners.

I would also like to share how some of our older shaping techniques are being expanded and revised, making the experience even more enjoyable for our learners.

Please come join me and Joan Orr of TAGteach as we discuss making shaping effective and fun.

Topics include:

- Observation

- Timing with click or other reinforcer
- Management of the reinforcer
- Decision Points
- Getting behavior

Join Peggy Hogan in a captivating webinar titled 'Lessons in Practical Behavior Shaping' as she shares her expertise and insights on this fundamental training skill. With over 20 years of experience in the field, Peggy has dedicated her career to exploring the power of positive reinforcement and shaping behaviors without the need for any type of coersion or punishment. Peggy spent many years exploring how to use positive reinforcement to shape a wide variety of behaviors, at liberty with horses, with no whips, ropes or wands. This was done at a time when there were very few horse clicker trainers.

In this webinar, Peggy will unveil a treasure trove of techniques, personal recipes, and advanced concepts that she has developed throughout her extensive training and teaching journey. Through engaging discussions and practical demonstrations, she will illustrate how shaping plays a pivotal role in teaching cooperative care behaviors, delving into real-life examples that highlight its effectiveness.

Furthermore, Peggy will extend her expertise beyond the equine realm and explore how these techniques can be seamlessly applied to human learners. This webinar promises to provide valuable insights and actionable strategies for trainers, educators, and anyone interested in the art of behavior shaping.

Don't miss this exceptional opportunity to learn from one of the foremost experts in the field. Reserve your spot now for 'Lessons in Practical Behavior Shaping' and embark on a transformative journey of understanding and mastery in shaping behaviors that apply to animals and humans alike.

TOPICS:

You'll learn about the following:

- A bit of history

- Shaping techniques revisited

- Start buttons

- Shaping each step progressively

- Assmebling multiple start buttons

- Seeing how this applies to humans

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. Mary Hunter, one of the creators of PORTL will explain the basics of shaping and of the game, show us how to play and will do a live demonstration with someone from the audience.

Please note that this is a 1.5 hour webinar

TOPICS:

-- what is PORTL?

-- what supplies do you need to play PORTL / how to set up the game?

-- benefits of playing PORTL

-- How PORTL can be used as a teaching tool

-- We'll focus on one shaping exercise from the PORTL curriculum - explain how it's played, what people learn from it, and how it relates to real-life teaching/training

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.

CEUs are no longer offered for TAGteach webinars.

Peggy Hogan has had several passions in her life, but the two most constant were the love of music and horses. She fell in love with horses at age three when her sister put her on a pay-per-lap pony ride in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. She started piano lessons and was in her first beginning recital at age four.

Throughout her adult life she has been a teacher of music, horses and their owners. The driving force behind her teaching and training is empowering the learner and more recently, the benefits of giving choice, consent and control to the learner.

Learning from clicker trainers of other species, Peggy has investigated ways to add more shaping, capturing, luring, and targeting to her clicker training for horses program. She explains and demonstrates that horses will offer complex behaviors freely if given the choice—behaviors that range from riding to horse agility to freestyle to medical procedures. Peggy has also worked with clicker training techniques successfully in the area of horse rescue.

Peggy is the founder of The Best Whisper is a Click, offering training to horses and the humans of the horse community in positive reinforcement-based training for the past 20 years. She has been a speaker at ClickerExpo conferences since 2013 and is a sought after speaker and workshop presenter.

Peggy has a master’s degree in psychology and is a Level 1 Certified TAGteacher.

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.