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Emily Flower
SERP 518
Communication Project

Communication Project
Student Profile:

Niko Tax is a very fun and goofy young man. Niko is currently a second-year

student at the University of Arizona in Project FOCUS. Project FOCUS is a program that

allows young adults aging 18-22 with intellectual disabilities participate in university

courses, campus life events, and internships to prepare for competitive employment. Niko

is 20 years old and has made a lot of progress throughout his time with Project FOCUS.

Niko enjoys spending time with friends and has participated in multiple university

courses, on campus internships, and campus life events. Currently, Niko has an on

campus internship at Fast Copy where he replaces the table toppers throughout the

student union. Niko enjoys his job and is working on becoming more independent. Niko

has a lot of personality and loves to goof around and make jokes with his friends and

teachers. He also loves to listen to music and watch videos on his phone. Niko primarily

uses his Accent Unity Sequence device to communicate. Niko will also use occasional

gestures and verbal speech and sounds to communicate with others.

Student’s Present Levels of Performance:

 Vision: According to vision tests conducted two years ago, Niko has 20/20 vision.

He is able to recognize teachers and known persons of interest from afar, can

identify half-inch icons on his device, and can distinguish between the correct

buttons to press on his iPhone when sending text messages.

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 Hearing: According to a hearing screening conducted in February of 2017, Niko

passed in both ears. He is able to recognize soft and quiet sounds, such as

whispers and can hear the music playing from his phone during breaks.

 Social: Niko has shown an increase in his ability to interact appropriately with

others. The instances of non-preferred touch from Niko have decreased

significantly. Niko has also demonstrated more interest in interacting with his

peers. Niko can advocate for breaks, tell people what is next on his schedule, and

is beginning to participate in greeting others, with prompting.

 Communication: Niko primarily uses his AAC device to communicate, but does

use some gestures and sounds as well. Niko is able to answer yes/no questions

with about 90% accuracy, greet friends appropriately with prompting, and

advocate for breaks and sensory input. Niko also showcases his personality by

communicating and acting differently around certain people. For example, Niko

will act more serious and professional when around professors and older

individuals, but will be goofy and silly when interacting with friends and peers.

 Cognition: Niko is able to participate in college-level classes and modified

coursework. He uses his AAC device to write essays including 3-5 sentences per

paragraph. He also writes daily blogs about his experiences on campus using his

AAC device and a blogging template. Niko is progressing in his ability to

independently go through a purchasing routine and tracks how long it takes

himself to navigate from point A to point B. In addition, Niko is able to respond

to text messages with pictures of his location with minimal support.

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 Motor Skills: Niko has hypotonia, meaning that he has low muscle tone

throughout his body. Although it was a challenge initially, Niko is now able to

open push/pull doors independently when given wait time. Niko does have some

fine motor skill needs, but is able to hold a pencil and scribble, open and close

Tupperware, and is improving in his ability to close twist caps on bottles

independently.

Assessor’s Purpose:

Although Niko loves to engage with his peers and wants to communicate with

them and have conversations with others, he is still learning his device and is not

completely independent with using it. Niko enjoys spending time with others, but often is

unsuccessful with initiating conversations and maintaining them. Since Niko is still

learning how to use his device and where different icons are on his device, he often times

relies on others to support him with finding different pages. This however, can be

challenging and inhibits Niko from successfully engaging with his peers because others

do not always know how to use his device either, and are therefore, are unable to support

him. This ultimately results in Niko engaging in inappropriate behavior to communicate

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his wants and needs. The purpose of the assessment for Niko is to increase his knowledge

of where common phrases are located on his device so that he is more independent with

interacting with others. The assessor wants to ensure that the communication strategies

that are created are meaningful and transferable for Niko’s future after he graduates from

Project FOCUS. Overall, the hope is that with this assessment and implementation of

communication strategies, Niko will become more knowledgeable about his device and

will be able to initiate conversations with peers with minimal support.

Assessments:

For the communication project, the three assessments that were chosen were the

Communication Matrix, Functional Communication Assessment: Form, Function,

Content and Context, and the Janzen-Functional Communication Assessment: Informant

Interview. The hope for using these three communication assessments was to learn and

understand Niko’s modes of communication across multiple environments and situations.

The Communication Matrix is an assessment tool that helps families and

professionals easily understand the unique needs of students that use forms of

communication other than speaking or writing. This communication assessment proved

to be beneficial to understanding Niko’s level of communication because it documented

whether he had mastered, surpassed, or was emerging in various communication skills.

This allowed the assessor to see where Niko’s areas of need are in regards to

communication and what skills he would benefit from practicing.

The Functional Communication Assessment: Form, Function, Content and

Context is used to analyze a student’s behaviors as communicative intent. For many

students, this can be a primary form of communication and is therefore, important to

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analyze and understand in order to create a communication system that can potentially

replace these behaviors. Niko has learned to use behavior as communicative intent and

has been successful at doing so. This assessment allowed the assessor to observe his

behaviors and determine their function, which gave the assessor the opportunity to

understand what Niko was saying by using those behaviors.

The Functional Communication Assessment: Informant Interview was completed

by Niko’s mom. This assessment is designed to obtain information about how a student

communicates in order to identify the most effective communication system for that

child. It was decided to have Niko’s mom complete the interview based on how Niko

communicates at home rather than at school. This allowed the assessor to gain access to

Niko’s world outside of school and gain an understanding of how his use of

communication varies across environments. The information obtained from this

assessment allowed the assessor to see how an effective communication system would

need to fit into Niko’s home environment in addition to at school.

Discussion:

The Communication Matrix showed that Niko relies heavily on unconventional

communication rather than conventional communication. For Niko, this means that

instead of using speech or writing, Niko has learned that his behaviors have become an

effective form of communication. For example, if Niko is feeling excited or happy, he

will tense up, clench his fists, and jump rather than verbally saying or using his AAC

device to say how he is feeling. On the other hand, if Niko is feeling anxious or

frustrated, he may hit himself on the top of his head to communicate his feelings.
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The Functional Communication Assessment: Form, Function, Content and

Context revealed that Niko uses behaviors to communicate his feelings, ask for help, self-

regulate, and ask for permission. The fact that Niko asks for permission to engage in

activities a significant amount of times shows that Niko is unsure of his abilities,

especially when it comes to using his AAC device. The assessor believes that Niko is still

trying to learn and navigate independence, but is not always sure how to do so and wants

input from others to make sure that what he is doing is correct or okay. This demonstrates

the need for people engaging with Niko to learn and understand his device in a way that

allows them to effectively support him when necessary.

The Functional Communication Assessment: Informant Interview completed by

Niko’s mom showed that, similarly to school, Niko relies on behaviors to communicate

his wants and needs. Niko’s mom shared that when Niko is hungry, he will walk to the

fridge or cabinet and find himself something to eat rather than using his device to say

‘hungry.’ The assessor believes that this is not due to a lack of expectation to do so, but is

instead because Niko is more comfortable at home and he does not need to tell his family

everything he wants and needs, just like any other individual. The assessor has observed

that Niko’s family is extremely supportive of him to learn and use his device and want

him to become more independent with using it.

Although Niko has an AAC device, he does not normally use it spontaneously.

Instead, Niko has found behaviors to be a more effective form of communication. These

three communication assessments have demonstrated Niko’s primary form of

communication as behavior as communicative intent. The assessor believes that part of

the reason why Niko uses behaviors to communicate his needs is due to the fact that he
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has not mastered where icons are on his device. Niko is unable to be spontaneous with

using his device because he does not know how to use it effectively and has not had

opportunities to do so with support. In addition to Niko, the individuals that support him

do not have a deep understanding of how to use his device. This means that they are

unable to support him with using his device even when he wants to engage in a positive

manner.

Rationale:

It was evident from the communication assessments that one of the main reasons

why Niko struggles with spontaneous communication with his AAC device is because he

is unaware of most icon sequences and also does not have the support of people around

him to help him. Since Niko already has a communication system in place, it was decided

to elaborate on what he had and implement trainings and support systems for peer

mentors and staff so that they could learn his device too and support him with using it.

Although Niko’s current communication system is not being used effectively, the

assessor felt as though there had not been enough time spent with encouraging the use of

Niko’s device and believed that Niko needed to be given an appropriate chance to learn

his device before changing it.

Description:

The main element of the communication system that the assessor implemented to

augment Niko’s communication was the incorporation of the icon sequences from his

AAC device into his support materials. The assessments showed that Niko was struggling

to communicate effectively and spontaneously with his device because he did not know

where icons were on his device. By incorporating Niko’s icon sequences into supports,
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such as his class notes, activities, and daily schedule, it allowed Niko the opportunity to

participate, engage in, and understand what was going on around him.

Niko started the school year using a daily visual schedule. The schedule consisted

of time frame of tasks, photos of the peer mentor that was supporting him with that task,

the name of the task, and a picture of Niko doing the task. Although this schedule system

was working well for Niko, the assessor modified it by adding Niko’s icon sequences

from his device for each activity. This allows Niko an opportunity to participate in his

schedule by telling staff, peer mentors, and others about what is happening during his day

using his AAC device.

Teaching/Implementation Procedures:

To begin, the assessor decided that the main way to support Niko’s

communication was to create a training for peer mentors and staff to view in order to

become more familiar with his AAC device and learn important icon sequences that Niko

needed to use on a daily basis. This training was created in Google Slides so that it could

be easily shared with peer mentors, staff, and others. The training consists of 68 slides

with visual and written steps for navigating the device. In addition, the training has a

short video modeling how to navigate his device and the process for some icon

sequences.

In addition, the assessor created a visual task list for how to download Niko’s

device software onto another Windows computer so that peer mentors and staff can

download it and practice using his device in order to build their comfort and

understanding of the device. Also, the assessor included steps for how to use the ‘write

with icons’ software so that peer mentors can support Niko with incorporating his icon
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sequences from his device into his notes. Peer mentors that have downloaded the

software onto their computer can use this element to copy and paste the icon sequence

into Niko’s notes so that they are accessible to him.

Once peer mentors and staff felt comfortable with using Niko’s device, they were

better able to support him with using it to communicate with others and complete

assignments. Niko was expected to write papers for his college classes and daily blogs

about his experiences on campus. Niko used his device to write these papers and blogs

using templates and supports with his icon sequences incorporated. The assessor created

these supports to further Niko’s communication and independence by allowing him

access to the icon sequences he needed to complete assignments.

Evaluation/Data Collection Methods:

The effectiveness of the communication system was evaluated by the quality of

the blog posts that Niko would write each week about his experiences on campus. The

targeted communication objective is:

‘When given access to templates including his AAC icon sequences, Niko

will write at least one blog a week for twelve consecutive weeks about his

experiences on campus using complete sentences and appropriate word choice

with minimal support, as measured by student work samples with data collected

once a week and recorded in a teacher log.’

The teacher log used to collect data evaluated Niko’s number of blog posts, types

of blog posts (class, work, campus life), and quality of blog posts. The quality of the blog

post was measured by the use of complete sentences and appropriate word choice. The

templates that Niko used to complete these blog posts provided him with a sentence
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starter using the icon sequences from his device. However, Niko was expected to

complete the sentence by choosing words and phrases that were appropriate for what he

was talking about. Prior to the implementation of the assessor’s communication system,

including the blog templates, Niko had written two blog posts with complete sentences

and appropriate word choice, however these posts were typed by someone else and were

not facilitated by Niko using his device. After the implementation of the communication

system and having the expectation of Niko to complete his blog posts with his device,

Niko was able to write 15 out of 20 blog posts using complete sentences and appropriate

word choice. Niko demonstrated mastery of this communication goal.

Future Recommendations:

It would be beneficial for the supports described above to continue throughout

Niko’s experiences after graduating from Project FOCUS. When possible, Niko should

have access to written language in combination with the icon sequences for different

words, especially for key vocabulary that is new. In addition, the training that was created

should be updated as Niko learns new icon sequences that are important and beneficial to

his independence. This will allow for future educators, co-workers, and friends to learn

Niko’s language, and therefore, be able to support him when learning new vocabulary

and practicing new icon sequences.

It is also recommended for Niko to start using ‘Vocabulary Builder’ on his AAC

device to learn and practice new icon sequences. Vocabulary Builder is a program that is

already incorporated within Niko’s AAC device. It allows for an easier learning process

with new vocabulary by reducing the vocabulary load. The Vocabulary Builder program

masks the number of visible words so that only those needed for specific conversations,
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activities, and situations are visible. The assessor believes that this could be useful for

Niko when learning key vocabulary for certain situations, such as words that he would

need to be successful at an internship or job. Overall, the use of Niko’s device training,

inclusion of his icon sequences into supports, and the use of Vocabulary Builder would

enhance Niko’s learning, understanding, and spontaneous use of his communication

device.