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Getting started with CompuThera
To launch the program, double click on the CompuThera icon on your desktop or from the taskbar’s Start button, locate the menu item (probably in the Programs submenu location) for CompuThera. The first screen that appears is the login window:
Once you have logged in your name (and the student’s name for the school version) the main screen appears.
These two sets of buttons on the main area of the screen are used to select a specific drill from a two dimensional matrix. For example, to select "receptive numbers", first push the top button captioned "Receptive" (second from left), then push the left button captioned "Numbers" (fifth from top). A "floating" button, at the intersection of the two highlighted bars, is the door to your selected drill.
The two first sets of drills ("Matching" and "Receptive") are receptive drills, meaning that the program probes the child and records his response. If the child is able to handle the mouse on his own, he will also be able to perform these drills unattended or loosely attended. Matching: The primary purpose of this drill is to have the student get familiarized with the computer and the handling of the mouse. Some children might have difficulty with a mouse. It might be necessary to have recourse to a Touch Window type device, applied directly to the computer screen, which is easier to master, at least initially. In this drill the student matches identical objects by placing the moving one on top of the corresponding static one on the screen. The computer labeling the object rewards each match. When seven objects have been successfully matched, a short musical clip terminates the matching session. Receptive: In Receptive drills the computer queries the student, probing his receptive vocabulary in one of the categories. The student responds to the SD: "Touch…" by clicking on the appropriate picture. Three choices are presented to him for each item. A wrong answer is met with a brief "NO" and a repeat of the SD with a prompt or hint on what is the appropriate answer. Two wrong answers in a row are met with the computer showing the correct picture by isolating it from the set. A correct answer at the first SD is met with musical and visual rewards. Answers from the student are automatically recorded as Correct (+), Incorrect (-) or Prompted (P).
The set of drills labeled Verbal Imitation, Expressive, Spelling, and Sight Words are said to be expressive drills because they require the student to be verbal or at least able to echo words or sounds to some extent. For these drills, the student response to the SD has to be recorded by the therapist. For this reason a therapist, parent or teacher needs to be with the student in order to record the response, using one of the buttons pictured below which are on the top of the screen for the chosen drill.
Autorun: Some expressive drills ("Verbal Imitation" and "Spelling") have an Autorun feature where all items appear in turn automatically, without requiring the student to respond to any SD or request. The intent is to expose the student with many pictures in a rapid fashion so as to keep him alert and maintain his interest. Here no score is recorded and the student can just watch the pictures as they appear.
Setting up and customizing the student’s treatment plan So far you have been able to select and run drills as they have been preset when the software was created. However, you probably want to limit the amount of material the student is exposed to at any given time, limiting the treatment plan to the currently targeted drills and items. For example when the student begins this program, if he is not verbal, you might want to disable any expressive drill. In matching and expressive drills you may want to teach him only a limited set of words (may be 1 or 2 at the beginning, then 4 or more).
The "Organize" dialog box will then appear, as shown below:
As you can see on the above figure, the left column contains the list of all items available in the category, along with a thumbnail of the picture. The 6 subsequent columns (one for each drill) display also the same list, along with a check-box for each item. This enables the teacher to configure the drills by tailoring the treatment plan for the child. For example, following the above picture, the items "baby" and "scissors" will be available for Matching Labels as well as for Receptive Labels, but won’t be available for Verbal Imitation. "Telephone", "ball", "banana", "clock", "doll", and "dress" will be available for both Expressive Labels and Spelling Labels. Items that are not checked will remain hidden and will not be asked from the student. As the student’s mastery of his vocabulary improves, you can then add new, more complex words, or move to the next drill a word that is mastered in a lower level in the drills hierarchy. In a given column, items for which the student has already been probed show a percentage of mastery (how often the student was successful in properly answering the SD, or verbal request). Let’s study this more in detail with an example. For this we chose the "Colors" category.
Treatment Plan Example using the Colors category Initially, none of the items is checked. This mean the category (here "Colors") is not available for the student.
As seen on the picture above all drills are disabled. If the teacher were to try to perform a drill a message similar to the one shown below would appear signaling that the drill has not been setup.
In the following picture, all items for the matching drill have been selected. When performing "Matching Colors" drill,
the student will see all colors (blue, brown, green, orange, purple, red, yellow) displayed randomly on the screen and will have to match
the moving cursor with each one of them in turn. The names of each color item will be echoed by the computer’s voice. This will help the
student familiarize with the labeling of each color.
After a while the teacher will enable items for the following drill (Receptive Colors), starting with the easiest items, possibly the primary colors blue, yellow and red (or whichever item he dims appropriate). This will enable these items for Receptive Colors. In this drill the student will be prompted to point to an item labeled by the computer’s voice, with the verbal request (or SD) "Touch…" for example "Touch blue".
The computer will record the student’s score and, as he progresses, the level of mastery will be displayed, as seen on the next picture.
The score displayed below the item name is cumulative, this means that it shows the percentage of mastery from the time the drill was introduced, not only the last session. When the student’s cumulative score reaches a mastery level of about 75% or 80%, it is time to advance in the program and enable the item by selecting it for the following drill. For example, in the picture above the item red shows a mastery level of 89%. It is time to introduce this item for verbal imitation, as shown by the picture below:
As more items are mastered in Receptive Colors drill, they move to the next level, Verbal Imitation:
As the student gains mastery of items, he becomes challenged at a more advanced level. Eventually his treatment plan might look as shown by the picture below.
It is also possible to create a printout of the treatment plan, to obtain a visual feedback of the student’s mastery profile.
The report for the current example, using "colors" as a category, is shown below:
This report shows at-a-glance view of the treatment plan. Items with a cumulative score of 75% or above are considered mastered and show with a fat yellow dot. Items with a score of 15% or more are considered in progress and show with a small yellow dot. Any item that made it all the way to the last drill and is mastered as Sight Words is automatically part of a pool of words from which sentences can be made for reading exercises. This feature ensures that the student will only be given sentences that he is able to read). For greater details on this, see the Reading drill.
From the treatment plan dialog box, the Reading tab offers the tools to configure reading sentences. This tab area contains nine list boxes (one for each category). Each of these boxes contains category items that made it all the way to the level of Sight Words and have been mastered at that level (see figure below).
By double clicking on any of these words you can construct sentences. Pressing the "Add" button will append the finished sentence to the bottom list box. The figures below demonstrate how to construct the sentence "the cat is red".
All sentences in the bottom list box are available for the Reading drill.
The following sections briefly explain each of the six drills, using the example of this same "Colors" category.
Using the category "Colors" as example, the following give a brief overview of each of the drills: matching, receptive, verbal imitation, "expressive, spelling, sight words. The last step, "reading" is the object of a separate drill.
The main aim of this drill is two fold: first to familiarize the student with the computer and the handling of the mouse device; second to accustom himself with the idea that objects, people, actions do have a label or name. All students who like matching identical objects will like this drill. The screen will display up to seven items from the current category. The cursor will take the shape of one of these items. The student needs to match the mobile cursor with the corresponding fixed item, clicking one on the other with the mouse button. A computer-recorded voice will label the item, which will disappear from the screen. When all items have been matched and are gone from the screen, the student will be rewarded with a song and a visual animation.
This drill is aimed at teaching the labeling of objects (colors in this example). The student does not have to be verbal for this drill. The computer will formulate the verbal request "Touch …" and the student needs to circle the targeted item by moving a circular cursor with the mouse device. If he is successful at once, a musical and visual reward will be activated. If he answer incorrectly, he will be visually prompted for the correct response. If two answers in a row are incorrect, the correct answer will appear. The following screen is presented to the student with the SD "Touch blue".
In this example, the student is expected to circle the blue shape.
When an item is receptively mastered (75% correct in cumulative score) the student is able to recognize the item from hearing its name. At this stage, the item can be introduced in verbal imitation, provided the student is minimally verbal or at least able to echo words upon hearing them.
Depending on the ability for the student to verbalize beyond echoing and label objects expressively, it may take some time before the teacher is able to move beyond this level. Help from a professional behaviorist and alternative strategies might be needed to reach the point of expressive labeling.
Once the student has made the conceptual leap to expressive labeling, his progress can be accelerated.
Note : in all expressive drills, the displayed item is always captioned with its label. This is to familiarize the student with the concept that all objects, people, shapes, colors…etc can be symbolized by a combination of letters. The ultimate goal is of course to be able to read without the need of the actual picture.
Before we can expect the student to recognize words by sight, he should be able to identify all letters in the word (which presupposes that the "letters" category be mastered receptively and expressively before moving to spelling in any other category). This is the purpose of this drill.
The therapist can point to each letter in turn in order to summon the student to spell. Pointing on a particular letter will highlight it. Pointing with the right mouse button will cause a prerecorded voice to enounce it. At this stage, the picture of the item is not displayed. Only the label appears as the verbal request "Read" is expressed.
Each word will be highlighted in turn, as a prerecorded voice will read the sentence, word by word. 
Expressively: this option allows the teacher to probe the student reading skills on the sentences built from the words mastered from the Sight Words drill. Here the teacher will highlight each word in turn by pointing on it with the mouse pointer. Clicking with the right button of the mouse will activate a visual prompt by displaying a picture of the highlighted word, if available.
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