Federal and state laws require that young children with disabilities or who are at risk for developing disabilities be provided with Early Intervention services according to their developmental needs. But currently there is a critical shortage of skilled EI providers. The primary reason for this shortage is a lack of educational and training programs. Except for some university-based programs that are often inaccessible to non-local students, most health care professionals, or those wishing to enter the field, do not have access to high-quality Early Intervention training programs. Moreover, today's professional early intervention workforce rarely has the time or flexibility to attend a fixed schedule of day or evening classes. One solution to these problems is Internet-based distance learning. The proposed Early Intervention training project, Early Intervention Online (EI Online) will develop, implement, and evaluate five web-based distance learning courses designed to train health care professionals to provide Early Intervention services to children with developmental disabilities. EI Online will be developed by Praxis, Inc., a small health care software development company that specializes in programs for children with developmental disabilities, in partnership with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The project has three major objectives: (1) Design, develop, implement and evaluate five new EI-Online modules, building on the results of our Phase I project, (2) Conduct a summative evaluation of the EI-Online to include a comparison of the course with a no-treatment control group and (3) Revise all modules based on field evaluation results and produce the final product in anticipation of Phase III commercialization.
The proposed project and the resulting product will directly benefit individuals who provide early intervention services to children with developmental disabilities. By teaching a set of core early competencies, providers will be better informed about selecting evidence-based early intervention methods and procedures, and better able to aid in such intervention directly. Appropriate early intervention enhances learning and behavior change, and ultimately can lead to greater the opportunities for independent living for individuals with developmental disabilties.
