Teaching Virtual Job Interview Skills to College Students With IDD Using Literacy-Based Behavioral Interventions

Abstract

College students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face challenges searching for jobs, often lacking communication and social skills needed during formal interviews. The COVID-19 pandemic complicates interviews, forcing students to search online and attend virtual interviews. This study used a multiple probe design across participants to examine the acquisition of literacy-based behavioral interventions (LBBIs) on virtual job interviews. Using a video conference platform, students answered interview questions from researchers acting as employers. LBBIs were customized, incorporating students’ input. Results indicated that LBBIs were effective for teaching and maintaining virtual job interview skills, and across novel employers. The findings have implications for using LBBIs to teach virtual job interview skills to students with IDD, and for researchers including these students in remote instruction.

Creating Electronic-Literacy Based Behavioral Interventions

“…See Table 1 for a task analysis of how to create an E-LBBI. Researchers have demonstrated that E-LBBIs can be successfully delivered via student-preferred modes of learning, such as on a tablet or laptop computer (Downey et al, 2021; Hall et al, 2018; Torres et al, 2021). The use of tablets or laptops to display electronic visual media makes interventions, such as E-LBBIs, more accessible and appealing to students (Mechling, 2008; Mechling et al, 2014).…”

“…LBBIs have been used to teach a variety of skills to individuals with disabilities aged 3–57 (Bucholz et al, 2008; Hall et al, 2019). Educators have used LBBIs to teach daily living skills (Brady, Honsberger et al, 2016), on-task behavior (Bucholz et al, 2008), self-regulation skills (Hall et al, 2019), employment skills (Hall et al, 2018; Honsberger et al, 2019), requesting a classroom accommodation (Hall Pistorio et al, 2021a), safety skills (Kearney et al, 2018), and job interviewing skills (Downey et al, 2021; Torres et al, 2021). LBBIs have been successfully implemented by classroom teachers (Anderson et al, 2016; Flores et al, 2014), pre-service teachers (Hall Pistorio et al, 2021a), job coaches (Hall et al, 2018) and peers (Honsberger et al, 2019; Kearney et al, 2018).…”