Please read this introduction that explains how the course works. Then click on "Autism Course Menu" in the box above to see the course modules.

Before we get started, let's talk about an important concept that you will want to consider. This is the idea of management versus education. Many parents spend a good deal of time managing their children's behavior. This involves telling them what to do, when to do it, what not to do, where to go and generally providing a stream of verbal instructions or physical prompting. Most children don't learn anything from this and the parents repeat the same performance over and over, day after day.

For example, if your child comes home from school every day and drops all his stuff in the front hall and every day you nag him to pick it up and put it away, that's management. If your child has frequent meltdowns and you spend time trying to comfort, placate or even restrain her, that's management. Think about your morning routine, there's usually lots of management going on there (where's your homework? do you have your lunch? put your shoes on, where's your coat? stop hitting your sister, hurry you're going to be late!).

The way to get out of the management trap is to educate your child and teach her new behaviors that can replace those behaviors that require you to manage constantly.

We have created a worksheet for you to help you determine how much time you spend managing behavior, and what behavior you would like to see instead. Once you have identified behaviors to replace those that require your management, you can start to figure out how to teach these to your child.

There is no magic bullet for teaching a child with autism. The only way to help your child learn and to reduce the amount of management you need to do, is to spend time specifically teaching your child.

This course with give you the information and methods you need to teach effectively. If you can commit to spend as little as 10 minutes a day using TAGteach to teach specific skills to your child, you will see an improvement over time.

This course assumes a basic understanding of behavior science and TAGteach. The course "Introduction to Behavior Principles" covers all the basics you need to know to get the most out of the "TAGteach for Autism" course. It includes videos and examples of TAGteach that are not included in the autism course. If you enrolled in the "Introduction to Behavior Principles" course it will have been listed in the available courses on your home page when you logged in to access your course. Go back now and review that course before you start this one.

If you didn't purchase the bundle that includes the Introduction to Behavior Principles course and you find now that you would like to review that course, you can purchase it here for $10 (regular price $30).

For help with your coursework or to share your success stories, we'd love to talk to you on the Facebook Group: TAGteach for Learning, Behavior and Special Needs. This is a private group, so you will need to apply and we will welcome you as soon as possible.

This is the best place to ask for help and advice. There is a wealth of experience on that group and it is monitored by TAGteach. We encourage you to start a conversation there, rather than by personal email so that others can benefit from the discussion and so that you get the best information available from the other TAGteachers.

Your course advisor is Martha Gabler. If you have any questions about the course or the homework please send Martha an email at martha@tagteach.com. Martha monitors both the above forums, so unless your question is private, please ask her on one of the forums so that others can benefit from the discussion.

If you have technical problems, please contact joan@tagteach.com.

This course was created by Joan Orr MSc, co-founder of TAGteach International and Martha Gabler MA, author of Chaos to Calm: Discovering Solutions to the Everyday Problems of Living With Autism. In order to ensure that this course would meet the needs of autism parents we conducted an online survey to find out the biggest concerns of parents living with autism. After reviewing the survey results and determining the most common concerns we held a series of webinars to explain TAGteach and to provide suggestions about teaching children in order to address these concerns and increase family happiness.

The webinar series was attended by autism parents, special needs teachers, behavior analysts and other therapists. After each webinar we requested feedback about what would be helpful for the next webinar and we addressed those issues as much as possible throughout the series. This course is derived from this webinar series and includes the webinar recordings and transcript as well as additional exercises and quizzes.

The course is broken down into manageable learning units so that you can work at your own pace and you can learn effectively even if you only have 10 minutes at a time to work on it. The course will remember where you left off and come back to that part when you come back.

Each section of the course starts with a video recording from a section of the webinar. This is followed by text that is a transcript of the webinar. This is intended to help with review so you don't have to try to find a specific part of a video. We recommend that you watch the videos and not just read the transcripts, since there is information on the slides that may not be in the transcript.  Any videos used during the webinar are included separately in the course, so be sure to watch them all. The demonstration videos are not included in the webinar recording video. We have added new content, not included in the original webinars. This new content is clearly indicated so that you won't miss any of it. Here is a visual explanation of the layout of each section of the this course:

How to use this course: You can move through the lessons in order, or you can move around by clicking on the headings from the course outline menu. The course will return you to the last part of the course that you visited if you leave and return. This course is hosted with a course host called Versal and is embedded here on this page. If you somehow find yourself on the Versal page, you can use the browser back button to get back, or use the link you initially used to access the course.

Videos: The videos in this course are hosted by YouTube as private videos. When a video finishes, other video choices appear in the video window. We suggest that you ignore subsequent videos since they may be unrelated to the course. To replay a video, click on the replay icon as shown here:

Quizzes and Study Aids: There are some mini-quizzes and practice games throughout the course. These are optional. Be sure to click on "submit" after every quiz question to get immediate feedback and a chance to try again.

Homework and Transcripts: There are downloadable transcript and homework PDF files for each section. You can download these at the beginning of each course section (there is no homework for part 5).

Error Messages: Occasionally you may see an error indicating that a gadget did not load. Please refresh your browser and this should fix the problem right away. If this persists please clear your cache. If this still persists send an email to support@versal.com for help.

Click on a section to start. We suggest that you do them in order. If there are numbers missing it's because you didn't purchase those sections.