TAGteach Presentations at ABAI

Every year TAGteach presents a session at the Association of Behavior Analysis state and international meetings. This gives us a chance to show our research results to the scientific community and to generate interest from others who want to apply TAGteach in their area of endeavor.  Each year excellent presenters join us to show the world what they have been doing with TAGteach. Below are slideshows of two of the presentations from 2010 ABAI. The third was discussed in a previous blog post.

The Combined Effect of TAGteach and Precision Teaching on Learning for Children with Autism - by Kevin Cauley and Elizabeth Benedetto-Nasho, Step By Step Learning Group Inc

Tagteach and Precision Teaching 2010

Creating and Following Directions In Hazardous Situations - TAGteach on the Bering Sea - by Theresa McKeon, TAGteach International.

TAGteach_ ABASymp_2010a

You can see a video that accompanied this presentation by clicking here. This video shows clips from a TAGteach consulting workshop where workers applied the TAGteach approach to solve some problems with training on work-related tasks.

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Introducing TAGteach to Fishermen Part 4

An ongoing account of TAGteach introductions, triumphs and tribulations!
Chapter 4
TAGteach, Parrots and the Men from the Bering Sea!

How Does One Reinforce for Learning to Reinforce Reinforcement?

Not a chair was left out of place, not a soda can or candy wrapper left on a table. This crew not only participated in every activity with great enthusiasm but now were seated and prepared for the second day even before the power point projector had even finished warming up.

OK, the guys were great, but what did we do to facilitate the process on day one?
We asked Amy and Tim “What do the guys really like?”.
"Well, they really like cigarette breaks but on the boat, once they start to work it’s hours and hours before they can even think about a break.
It is also difficult to eat while they are working."
Ok, Terry made sure there were frequent smoke breaks during the first day.
There was also a well stocked snack table close by for easy access.

Then there were the casino chips. They were handed out liberally during the first day for answering questions, asking questions or anything resembling active participation. After the completion of the first day the crew was driven out to a local casino, provided a great dinner and then allowed to gamble for several hours. Black Jack and roulette tables were well attended and I was told substantial sums were won by several of the guys.
Unfortunately, that did not include me as my limit of $20.00 was greedily gobbled by a five cent slot machine in under ten minutes…no reinforcement for me...I digress…

On the second day the chickens were tucked away for good and it was time to transfer the clicker training into a methodology that could be employed on a ship.

The first thing was to get the guys comfortable with giving and receiving positive reinforcement. Usually in a formal setting like this we rely on the leader to deliver praise or affirmation.
I wanted the guys to also get comfortable with saying to their peers or bosses, “yes”, “good job”, “I agree”, “I don’t agree but thanks for the input”.
It’s not as easy as it sounds.
When was the last time you felt confident giving a coworker or your boss a literal or figurative slap on the back and a hearty verbal, “good job”?
In the beginning it can make you feel a bit vulnerable. It takes practice.

Since the guys enjoyed the games of chance, I designed a reinforcement system from a deck of cards and a chance to play a hand of poker.
Actually it was an adaptation of a brilliant reinforcement plan developed by a fellow TAGteacher, Kevin England. Each guy was given a hand full of playing cards. If they liked anything a fellow attendee did or said or thought, they could hand them a playing card.
At each break the guys would look through the cards they had, pick out the best 5 and see who had the best poker hand. The more cards given out the better chance they had of a having a winning hand. The best hand received a casino chip.

It took a while for the guys to understand that it was not only the leader in the group (myself) who could dole out the cards… they had just as much responsibility to encourage participation and acknowledge success as I did.
To reinforce what I wanted (for them to hand out cards to each other) I would hand out a card to anyone who handed out a card. Now the guys were reinforced for reinforcing….

Stay tuned for chapter 5

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Introducing TAGteach to Fishermen Part 3

An ongoing account of TAGteach introductions, triumphs and tribulations!
This is the third installment of ,
TAGteach, Parrots and the Men from the Bering Sea!

Part 3: Egg laying and Clicker Training Give a Bear Hug to TAGteach and Poker Chips

January 2008, Seventeen members of the Seafisher management team arrived in Sequim, Washington for the first ever collaborative TAGteach-Clicker Training seminar for commercial fishermen.
Terry and I were honestly a bit apprehensive.
Would our training interest these tough guys?
Would they participate or sit back sullenly, arms folded, waiting for the day to end.
Had we prepared a program that would be applicable and beneficial to the crew of a commercial fishing vessel?
No time like the present to find out!

All seventeen guys were seated with coffee and snacks neatly placed on the side of their desks next to their pens and yellow pads of paper.
Note taking?…They had come prepared for work. In fact they were seated and ready fifteen minutes early. The guys were immediately rewarded for their attentiveness with real poker chips that could be used that night at a local casino.
Big smiles and laughter broke out…success…this reinforcement plan was used throughout the day to encourage participation.
Note: casino chips are great reinforcers!

How does you pick up a chicken?
Will it peck my eye out?
Will it fly off the training table?
How do you hold it so it doesn’t…uh…leave droppings on you?
All very good questions answered with great patience by Terry during the first few minutes of class. The guys quickly warmed up to their egg-laying beady-eyed, clucking partners and got down to the serious business of clicker training chickens.

The training sessions were brief as chickens can only be trained for a few minutes at a time. This left plenty of time for Terry to introduce the basics of using a clicker, operant conditioning and force free training. The guys quickly learned you cannot force a chicken to do anything except get back into its cage. Yelling, cajoling and threatening would only be met with a blank chicken stare. On the other hand you can encourage a chicken to do all manner of chicken things and then reward them when they do. Walk over here; climb on top of that, peck the paper with the picture of a flounder on it instead of the paper with a mackerel on it on so on.

The group was amazed. They could train a chicken to do a variety of skills without raising their voices or even using language at all. If I can train a chicken…I can train anything! Yep, the seed was planted.

Next Installment:
Chickens to Champions: Making the TAGteach Jump

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Introducing TAGteach to Fishermen Part 2

This is the second installment of ,
TAGteach, Parrots and the Men from the Bering Sea!

Part 2
Cascade company co-owner Tim: Burly Bear or Behaviorist Extraordinaire?

Tim said it was time for a shift in the way the management and crew communicated with each other on the boat and in the shipyard." Tim speaks and people jump, literally.
He is not only the co owner of the company; but a big guy with a booming voice and personality. He is also open to ideas that will benefit his employees and has great trust in Amy's recommendations, so when she told him about her idea, he listened.

"Why don't you listen to this CD and tell me what you think"Amy said. She handed over an audio book of Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor. "This is about the science of teaching and learning, it doesn't matter whether it is dogs, cats, dolphins or fishermen. It's just science. I've done the preliminary research by contacting Karen Pryor Clicker Training and explaining our situation. They sent me to TAGteach International which is the company that caters to the human branch of clicker training. I think they could really help us".

After hearing the CD, Tim was cautiously optimistic. Cascade had tried offering traditional `management training' in the past with less than ideal results. Men in suits laden with personality quotients and powerful buzzwords just weren't bringing the right ingredients with them. This I understood. I've been to a few of these seminars and while the information was interesting, it was nearly impossible to bake that cake.

This TAGteach stuff piqued Tim's interest but he wanted to attend a seminar first to assure it would be a proper fit for his guys. Tim is not the kind of guy that will keep forcing a square peg into a round hole….We found a seminar close enough that despite a crazy schedule, Tim, Amy and an engineering manager could attend.

The seminar was held at Terry Ryan's dog training facility in Sequim, Washington. The seminar had open enrollment including 2 behavior analysts, a flight instructor from Australia, 2 classroom teachers, 3 people who teach people to train dogs and of course Tim, Amy and B.

TAGteacher, Keri Gorman and I often teach seminars together and she agreed to help plan and teach this one. It's wonderful to have friendly, knowledgeable co teachers like Keri. I often look to her with a stumped look on my face and say, uh…why don't you answer that question!

Well, the seminar must have been acceptable as we started discussing plans for a Cascade event while at dinner the first night. Terry (the owner of the facility) joined us for dinner and conversation during which her achievements not only a dog trainer but a "chicken camp" director came out. The idea of being able to train chickens to discriminate in a short period of time was intriguing to Tim. It would be fun and certainly entertaining for the guys and maybe tie into the TAG training somehow. He threw the suggestion out for consideration.

I was horrified.
Haunted by "You can't train me like some kind of dog with that clicker thing", I had spent the last 4 years trying to build a great big wall between animal clicker training and TAGteach. Now there would have to be an explanation for "Are you trying say we are only as smart as chickens?". Well, there are stories circulating that Tim gets what he wants and can be intimidating but he used his charm and positivity to convince us to give it a try…The TAGteach seminar would partner with Terry Ryan who would present a lecture on operant conditioning and a chicken training introduction.

Stay tuned for part 3...
Egg laying and Clicker Training Give a Bear Hug to TAGteach and Poker Chips

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Introducing TAGteach to Fishermen Part 1

Welcome to the adventures of TAGteach!
(Insert appropriate TV introduction music here.)

An ongoing account of TAGteach introductions, triumphs and tribulations!
This week I offer the first installment of :
TAGteach, Parrots and the Men from the Bering Sea! by Theresa McKeon

(Warning... these accounts are in bloggish form which means they have not been edited and will contain gross errors in grammar, form and spelling. I often use ... as a pause when I don't feel the comma is up to the task of defining the whirring sound that goes off in my brain when I think. It is my desire to dispense the information and later find perfection. To prove my point and horrify professional writers, Iwill add an emotcon :) )

Chapter 1
Blink...blink, blink...blink If this had been a face to face meetingi nstead of a phone call, the client would have thought the person she contacted was stone deaf. I was caught speechless. I didn't make the caller repeat herself but I did have to mentally replay the introduction. "Hi, this is Amy Duz owner of IWorkWise, a company that provides safety training and regulatory compliance consulting for several major companies. I would like to talk to you about providing a management training course for the crew of a commercial fishing vessel in Dutch Harbor, Alaska"

I recovered from brief bout with aphasia. "Hmmm, you mean like the television show, "The deadliest Catch"? Like with freezing temperatures and slippery decks and very, ah...tough...people... She made a sound that must have been a cross between a sigh and a chuckle. "Well, yeah, I guess. But these guys are fantastic. They are smart and fun and want to make their workplace better."At the risk of alienating this woman further, I blurted out "Do you know what we do?" "Yes" she replied with great confidence, "you teach people how to work with other people in a positive reinforcing manner, yes?"

Well yes, that was true but usually it was directed towards coaches, teachers and behavior analysts... you know, land lubing types. I wasn't sure that the guys who performed "the world's most dangerous job" would be wholly captured by positive reinforcement and marker based training.

Oh the biases we hold close to the vest.

After a proverbial throat clearing to convince her I was not unsure of my ability to provide said services, maybe just nursing an early cold, I said, "We can do it!" (You may have noticed a certain politician co-opted my powerful phrase with some equally positive results.) I asked Amy how she had found us and she recounted the search for positive training and her path to TAGteach.

Amy had a parrot that was in need of training when what should appear in the pocket of her airplane seat but a fortuitously left behind copy of Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor. The book literally opened the world of reinforcement based training to Amy. The leap between positive behavior training for parrots and positive physical and behavioral training for humans was not so big. "I'll call Karen" she thought...and she did.

Next installment:
Company co-owner, Tim: Big Burly Bear or Behaviorist Extraordinaire?

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Comments from Cascade Fishing Workers

Here are some comments from the participants from the second seminar held for Cascade Fishing Company workers. They had implemented TAGteach in real life situations on the boat and had come back for a more advanced seminar to learn more.


"Now other commercial fishing companies are hearing about it and they are considering the same training."

"Train a chicken?! It was amazing I learned you can't force something or someone to learn, I have to work with them."

"It gives you patience to solve a problem instead of getting angry and yelling."

"It taught me to look at myself every time I train. Never blame the person you are training. I never saw it like that before this seminar. That's why we came back for a second seminar and brought back more people."

"I believe it's beneficial for any company that trains people to do anything."

"It just streamlines the idea of teaching and understanding "This is really good stuff"…Theresa said that!

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Update on Cascade Fishing Company Training

Update from the second annual Cascade training weekend with TAGteach/Legacy/I WorkWise

We just held our second annual TAGteach + A Mini-Chicken Camp seminar for the managers of the commercial fishing and processing ship, Seafisher.

This ship fishes the crazy waters in the Bering Sea and maintains a crew of over 80 for several months at time.The crew and managers come from all over the world and try to use English as a common language but all have heavy accents from their native tongue. Add all the testosterone and seriously hard work under less than ideal conditions and you have the potential for a perfect storm of broken communication and management issues.

Cascade, the company that owned the Seafisher realized this and decided to turn the tide so to speak. You could say they wanted to be "crossover" trainers. They already had Amy Duz and her company IWorkWise to do the skill training aboard the boat but she quickly realized that communication skills were what was lacking (she is a behavioral genius!).

She convinced the management to try clicker training for humans (TAGteach) and to include a day a chicken camp led by Terry Ryan. It was a bit of a long shot…would the guys get the correlation between training chickens and working in a positive manner with their crew?

Well they certainly did! Every manager including the ships captain, head engineer and processing managers have now attended at least 2 TAGteach and Chicken camp combo's! They all learned to train a chicken and how to add the principles and TAGteach methodology in their day to day management arsenal.

After the first seminar, the guys brought the principles back to the ship and boat yard. Training and communication on the boat improved tremendously and accidents were nearly wiped out.

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