James L. Soldner

Interteaching: Application of an Empirically Supported Behavioral Teaching Method in Distance Rehabilitation Education.

Purpose: Interteaching, an emerging, empirically supported behavioral teaching method, has been recently and successfully introduced in the college classroom. Historically, most interteaching studies have been conducted in didactic classroom settings. To date, no published interteaching studies have used an online course format. Furthermore, no component analysis of the pair discussion component of interteaching has been published. Therefore, this study was intended to examine the pair discussion component of interteaching in an online graduate rehabilitation course. Method: Two conditions were randomly assigned across participants and sessions. The first condition included all key components of interteaching in which student dyads were placed in breakout rooms to discuss the assigned preparation guide. The second condition involved all components of interteaching, with the exception of pair discussion. In this condition, students were placed in breakout rooms to complete the preparation guide on their own. Average student quiz scores were compared across conditions. Results: The pair discussion condition resulted in higher student quiz scores, p < .01. In addition, social validity findings indicated the majority of students reported preference for interteaching with the inclusion of the pair discussion component than without. Conclusions: Finally, limitations of this study and future directions for interteaching technology in online education is discussed.