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ABSTRACT Project CORE Project CORE is designed to develop products and services that support the implementation of a core vocabulary approach to augmentative and alternative communication for school-aged students with significant cognitive disabilities who also have complex communication needs. The evidence-based and empirically derived core vocabulary approach is expected to support students with significant cognitive disabilities in developing symbolic communication that can be used across contexts while supporting improved academic success. The core vocabulary approach is designed to grow with students within and across school years as educational teams used data to determine when and how to increase the complexity of the system. An iterative development cycle will be used to develop, evaluate, and revise products and services required to effectively implement the core vocabulary approach. By improving access to evidence-based, flexible, and broadly applicable core vocabulary and improving its integrated implementation in academic instruction, students with significant cognitive disabilities are expected to improve communicative competence, symbolic communication, and ELA outcomes. The Implementation Drivers approach (Blase, van Dyke, & Fixen, 2013) will guide the evaluation of the project implementation while overall project performance will be evaluated with a combination of measures of fidelity of implementation, and student communication, language, and literacy outcomes.

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Contact Person

Lori Geist

Website Address

http://www.project-core.com

Investigators and Key Personnel

Lori Geist, Karen Erickson, Penny Hatch, Claire Greer

Primary Funding Source

US Department of Education (DoEd)