Our college purchased Auto Skills software and is sending special needs students to work on it.
Our centre did not choose it and has no knowledge of it. Training consisted of instructor management tasks but did not deal with how to adapt it to a particular student need.
I have no idea how to use it in a manner appropriate to individual students, or what outcomes to expect.
I have gone through it as a student (a very frustrating and boring experience), and tried to use it as an instructor (a total experience in frustration!) I saw no value in it.
I noticed a page that said essentially that it is a tool for reading and math SPECIALISTS, which we are most decidedly not, but our students are being sent to use it like an independent learning tool. I have a feeling instruction should be tailored to each lesson and delivered previous to using the lesson, but our students, as far as I am aware, are not getting this information and apparently this is the case in the public schools.
I saw this program years ago and dismissed it as inadequate and poorly developed. Since going through it, I have learned it is NOT suitable to anyone with even a mild hearing impairement. The salesperson was defensive when I raised that point, so I do not feel I can talk to him about anything beyond software management issues.
I still do not see any pedagogical value. I need to compare our resources to apply for a reading program I know is suited to helping our general student population. I want to show the 3 reading programs we have address different students/skills, but I can’t don’t understand what AutoSkills is supposed to do, except improve “Automaticity”, whatever that [i]really[/i] means.
If you have used this and found it valuable, or not, please let me know how you use it, who you use it with, who delivers the program, what qualifications they have, what resources are needed (physical and human) and how outcomes like transfer of learning are measured. Tell me why it is valuable to you.
Maybe it [i]is[/i] a valuable resource for special needs students but right now, my assessment is that it is high-priced worthless junk!