Event ID: 3055450 Event Started: 11/16/2016 7:00:00 PM ---------- Please stand by for realtime captions. >> Those of you just joining us, we will get started in just a few minutes. We will give people a few more minutes to join. >> This is Amy testing the sound. >> It is coming in good. >> Nothing like getting cut off right before a webinar. >> Thank you for your support. >> This is Robin with the National Center on Jeff -- deaf-blindness. I'm showing it's the top of the hour so I am going to get us started as people settle in. I want to begin by welcoming everybody. I'm going to go through some housekeeping items before I handed over to Amy and Ritu. First of all as you probably experienced, all the phone lines have been muted to alleviate the background noise. The question-and-answer session will occur at the end of the webinar, however, if you have questions throughout the webinar you can type them into the chat pod and Amy and Ritu will be watching that and going over those at the end of the webinar. We want to let you know that this webinar will be recorded and archived for future viewing so please be mindful of your comments in the chat pod. I'm going to start the recording now and when you hear the recorded voice, that will be your queue to get started, Amy and Ritu. >> This meeting is now being recorded. >> This is Amy speaking. Welcome everyone and I'm so honored to be co-presenting today with Dr. Ritu Chopra. The executive director of The Paraprofessional Resource and Research Center at the University of Colorado at Denver. Very quickly, you know who we are and you have our wonderfully skilled Robin who is helping facilitate this meeting and keep all of our accessibility options going. We always greatly value her support on that. You know who we are at the National Center. I'm looking through the participant list so we won't have to go through that. We do want to emphasize that our state, University in family partners here are most welcome. We are a part of co-creating the system that we are going to be describing today. We do always like to ask some questions of people. We wondered if you would humerus please by introducing yourself in the chat pod just as a way to say hello to those who may not -- who are still getting to know everyone's name and what people do. If you don't mind, if you would share your interest in supporting qualified interveners. That is something that can get us going. We tend to have very active and rich chat pod's which is a part of a way for us to communicate together in these virtual spaces. Very quickly today as you are introducing yourselves and scanning the chat pod, we have some learning outcomes for today. The goals of today are to develop an understanding of the background of NICE quickly . The collaboration of an CDB and the PAR2A center to understand the roles and responsibilities of states and university partners who want to support trained interveners to use the system. That's a very specific role that we are going to be talking about today. And it's an evolving role. We are excited to talk about that with you. We are going to go over the roles and responsibilities of the NICE review board. As I scanned through the chat pod, I do see that several people also may be represented on our NICE review board as reviewers or advisors. That will be a good refresher on some of those very important roles which are a part of making the system both high-quality and accountable and community responsive as we launch this. The last goal for today is to understand the roles of the community. This is going to be a really open launch. It was open in the way we designed the system and it's going to be open in the way we communicate with the community about the use of this system for the United States. I'm going to lunch right in and fortunately you will get to hear from my partner, Ritu, in a few minutes. I'm really honored to be here with her. The background on this project, most of you already know that the Office of Special Education Programs really gave us a lot of clear partnership and direction on this initiative. It has eventually resulted in the partnership between the PAR2A Center and NCDB around certification processes and since -- systems for interveners. Back in 2012 you all remember that intervenor recommendations were published. The community who was engaged in surveys and focus groups with us at the time clearly said that we need ways to recognize competencies. Many people support the current national credential that exists and we think that's wonderful. State partners also said we need ways, perhaps more than one way, to recognize competency. So we have pools of trained interveners in Minnesota, Arizona and other states. Utah, people that have been trained at East Carolina your -- University. We need a system that can recognize that training and recognize that competency. So this is resulted in NICE, the second bullet, it is the National Intervener Certification E-portfolio. It's an e-portfolio system that is really an assessment. It leads to a national certificate through the use of digital artifacts, virtual mentoring, online scoring, feedback and analytics regarding the reliability and scoring processes within the system. So what that means is, there are many services that are being provided, materials, resources that have been created, that support this ecosystem which are completely free. This system is actually the point of truth where an intervener themselves upload artifacts, describes them, perhaps works with a virtual mentor and creates the narrative of their story. I'm enjoying looking over at the chat pod to some really wonderful, well-qualified state and family partners here today. This process was developed over two years using a participatory and iterative approach which incorporated feedback. So we engaged with practicing interveners, their state partners, University experts and with reviewers to design the system. Moving ahead, one of the most exciting pieces of this system, I think, is a very strategic way that we are engaging with the community to ensure that this process is high-quality, fair and transparent to the community. And through the partnership with Ritu at the PAR2A Center, it is kind of cute to say. We could have fun with that all day. She has worked with us to guide a NICE review board. And an CDB's role in that has been to help Ritu and her team identify qualifications for reviewers. So on the NICE review board there are reviewers who review e-portfolio's. They are qualified before they are recruited with deep training and deaf-blindness, with familiarity, with interveners. They are trained to use a protocol, they are supported to use that protocol with some practice scoring opportunities, aim they are the ones who will receive submissions and independently review them. We also have advisors from the community. From the national family association on deaf-blindness, other universities, the charge syndrome foundation. These are advisors who serve the review board to help give us feedback. Advisors don't actually review e-portfolio's, but they do give us advice on the system. How is it performing? Is it inclusive? The reviewers and advisers are going to help us make important decisions this year as we launch this, gather feedback and assess it in September 2017. So another role that we do is again as I said identify qualifications support with recruit -- recruiting NICE review board members. Support in developing the training and policy guidelines. Much of the training materials that we have used were designed and tested through the beta and field testing process. So they have been through several iterations of actual use and practice, revision, to look at how good and strong are they and are the useful. An CDB's role is to maintain -- our support is definitely coming from our grant, our cooperative agreement with OSEP to provide not only the design infrastructure but the support of the platform. The actual use of that platform by an intervener is involving their use of artifacts and their assessment process and their pursuit of certification. But the support that we provide to the platform itself, it is a part of what we are providing to Ritu with the The PAR2A Center and to make sure the structure of the e-portfolio system is working, is usable and we've worked really hard to do that. Our web develop your here, Mr. Jeff Denton, has been deeply involved in that. Identifying and designing analytics and evaluation for the venture system. As I said this year we are really discovering a lot. Who will use the system? Very excited to say that just this week we will be launching a small group of interested interveners and state partners who are ready to mentor those interveners to use the system. And again this is not training someone to become an intervener. This is really orienting someone to what is it going to take to use artifacts to develop an e-portfolio and to tell your story. So we will get into that a little bit later in the presentation. What we do for the Deaf-Blind network is similar to our roles that you are very familiar with anyway. NCDB's role is to provide assistance to state Deaf-Blind for accessing and using free training were materials like the NICE -- free materials like the NICE modules which are part of what our grant provides. Assistance to state and planning models of outreach and technical assistance with cohorts of interveners and mentors through a technical assistance planning form and process. We will get into that a little more later and perhaps you have questions about that. But as interveners become interested in this system, they can reach out to us and let us know that they are interested. We immediately then reach out to our state and university partners to say there is someone who's interested. Are you ready to support them to use the processes and materials and it's been really exciting to see the ways that states even want to work together as teams of perhaps mentors working with interveners to start using the materials and processes that will help them build a successful e-portfolio and have a good assessment process. We, as usual, this is our style and how we roll. We like to coordinate highly participatory processes with state partners. And the PAR2A Center as well to produce more mentoring materials for using the NICE system. And vision this with me if you will, not only are we using this system to help empower interveners to have recognized -- recognition of their competence through certification, we want to empower our state Deaf-Blind partners and university partners to think about networks of mentors. What is going to make this system sustainable? Do you have teachers? Do you have orientation and mobility specialists in your state? Do you have related service personnel who want to use this system to support interveners to be successful and who will mentor them? That's what we will be working on this year is the development of appropriate mentor training materials to support this entire ecosystem for a successful launch. Again, we are more than happy and willing to provide support to interested state and university partners through our virtual community of practice on the trend 12 website or to look at other -- NCDB website . I'm going to turn it over to my partner to talk about the PAR2A Center and it's a little bit about itinerary -- history and role in this process. >> Thank you. This is Ritu from The PAR2A Center and I'm recovering from laryngitis so I may lose my voice. Amy might have to step in. I direct the -- The Paraprofessional Resource and Research Center at the University of Colorado. We have been a grant funded center for the last 24 years and our work is also on paraprofessional training. We have a model that we have used for paraprofessionals in our focus has been in-service practicing paraprofessionals who haven't had the opportunity to go to college or they just have not been able to find a way of getting credit for the work they do. Our focus is that group of paraprofessionals. We have training projects, paraprofessional teacher projects and a program for improvement and we have done several research projects. Many of our projects have been funded by the Office of Special Education Programs. This particular work working with NCDB and NICE has totally aligned to my professional agenda which is recognizing and honoring as well as validating those paraprofessionals or interveners who have done amazing work for many years and they need a credential where they can actually say that, I know what I'm doing and I have this credential was has validated that I know what I'm doing. That work has been very close to my heart and I'm excited to be part of this work. I've been -- I was also a part of the open hands open access module that was an external advisor. I'm pretty immersed in that work also. And the approach also that the NCDB has used all along in terms of the participatory approach, collaborative approach and it's not just one person centered or one institution centered. All of those things have really been attractive to me for becoming a partner in this particular effort. Another thing I mentioned which [Indiscernible-muffled] is the work with mentors and mentoring. The importance of mentoring and particularly mentoring paraprofessionals and novice teachers who come from nontraditional backgrounds. I'm so glad it is part of the mission of NICE as well. As far as our responsibilities, I think we are basically implementing all of this great work that has been done by NCDB . We are under their technical -- with their technical advice, our responsibility is to make sure that this whole process of establishing or honoring or verifying knowledge and skills of interveners -- the whole process is high-quality. It is fair and a systematic process. We will be managing the system for them, the digital infrastructure platform, we use Venture. We will also be responsible for managing the training materials for reviewers. There is a whole training package which we have been very active in its development and finalization. Recently we have come up with a whole package which we will be sharing what it includes in a minute. We also will be working -- we have an evaluator at our end who is not here today but [name unknown] is our in valuator and he will work closely with the NCDB evaluator in making sure we are getting -- selecting the data and analyzing the data which gives us information about the performance of the system, the user experience. And collecting formative as well as summative data and tweaking the system as we go along. We also -- the training of reviewers around scoring and the scoring protocol, that part also we manage and receive feedback from reviewers on that. How it goes for them and how it can be improved. We will also be providing feedback to the interveners in terms of once the review process is completed by the reviewers. We will be letting the reviewers and interveners know in terms of what their score was, if they passed, what the next steps are in case they have to resubmit. And we will also be responsible for the dissemination of guidelines for intervenor applicants and intervenor training programs. Another function that we will be doing is receiving payment from the intervenor applicants. I just want to clarify here, there is no charge in terms of any of the training or use of any of the materials that have been created but the payment is for any licensing or any kind of credentialing -- we all know when we have to go to a license there is a fee that is charged. Everything else, even the reviewers are dedicating their time. They are not charging anything. There are no other charges involved. The only charge involved is when the interveners have completed their portfolio and they submit the portfolio. At that time it is like a license fee. -- Licensing fee. >> Very good, right to. A lot of thought and even conversation about that be. Though -- fee. We are sensitive to this fact of social justice for most interveners and have even been talking with a few states about creative ways that even administrators could support this process if interveners have enough information. I know I spoke with some partners in California about that that and intervenor could possibly approach an administrator about getting that certification fee reimbursed a were successful. And again, that may even work for the intervenor in another way in terms of getting administrators support hopefully for a pay raise or to be recognized for this new certification in the field. Very quickly, we will go on into responsibilities of state and university partners. Interested partners, if you are interested out there, who have interveners that are ready to pursue certification are ready to pursue NICE , please get in touch with me. Get in touch with NCDB to look at ways that we can support you and your interveners possibly hosting small groups to use our to free NICE modules. That is one of the roles that you have in reaching out and we will be a partner with you in that at NCDB to help you think through technical assistance that you might provide, how you might provide it with another state partner who has interveners that are ready to preserve this process. As I said for state partners are going to be working with us later this week even smarter -- tomorrow to start a group through the two NICE modules. I said also point something out. If you all have any questions at all , not only can you contact me at any time and I know you can contact Ritu , you may want to explore. If you scroll to the top of the chat pod, Robin has put a link in their that is on our NCDB page on NICE which you can click on. There is a downloadable and printable graphic that explains the steps of using NICE. If that is more helpful to you, if you are a visual learner, feel free to go there. Take your time, read, download it. And to call us at any time to ask more questions or to explore what's possible. As I said, and Ritu, thank you. Interested state and youth university partners who are ready to start -- university partners who are ready, you are helping and intervenor understand the e-portfolio process so that they can be successful. When they are ready to pursue that assessment and certification, we want the intervenor to have every bit of information that they need to display their competence and not be unprepared for that process. So we are kind of stacking the deck not only for it to be fair but for people to have the information that they need to be successful. As Ritu said, some interveners have never been to college but they may be very highly skilled interveners. They may have been to and intervenor training program through a state Deaf-Blind project partner and they've been practicing. They may know sign language. They may have deaf parents. There are all kinds of ways that someone can come to us with competence that needs to be recognized. So these two modules are designed to help someone understand what the heck is a CEC competency? What does that even mean? To talk through them and think about their own practice. What is an artifact? How do I use this thing called an artifact to show what I know? And to be comfortable using technology. We had interveners from all over who participated with us. Somewhere very comfortable using technology. They could use their iPhones, other tools and others were really quite intimidated by that. Our second module actually helps someone see the system and understand the system before they enter it to begin uploading their artifacts and participate in the assessment process. As I said, when NCDB hears from interested interveners on our website or email , we immediately -- and that person is me -- reaches out to the state or university partners to let them know how to take the next step and what kind of possibilities are out there. So that is kind of the fun part. State and university partners can assign themselves or act as mentors to interveners in the system. Now this is a very important part of the model. We knew that interveners just learning how to tell your story is sometimes an overwhelming process even if you are really good at what you do. Right? So we wanted to look at this as an opportunity to help our state and university partners develop the capacity with their interveners and to act as mentors with them. Again, some states are looking at maybe I don't always need to be a mentor myself as the state Deaf-Blind Project Director I may not have time to do that mentoring. But I look across my state and I see so many talented professionals who do have training in deaf-blindness and are passionate about interveners who want to support them. How can I use my network effectively to support this model? And hopefully open it up and do you know what we heard from people? This one surprise any of you. When someone mentors another person, their competency increases also. Their knowledge, their skill in deaf-blindness increases and the buy-in for the model increases and the support network goes up so you don't have to feel like the Lone Ranger. We are trying to design this model where people can think about how can I provide support as a state Deaf-Blind project partner and more importantly how can I look at the resources in my state or in a region to support the interveners success? There is a written agreement which is the last part of this which is more important and I'm going to speed up a little bit. There is so much good information to share. Mentors and interveners follow an individualized written agreement form that outlines the roles and responsibilities of the mentoring relationship, how much time is involved, when our convenient times for a mentor to look at and interveners work or an artifact and offer feedback. That is a very individualized process. At minimum and this is what we recommend, people meet virtually or meet face-to-face at least three times. Some people may choose to do more than that. Ultimately the intervenor is responsible also. This involves a lot of buy-in from practicing interveners. They are the ones who cultivate the artifacts. A mentor doesn't do that for them. The interveners review the artifacts, received feedback and use them to tell their story. State Deaf-Blind project partners or university partners act as host for the interveners who are ready to use the NICE project -- process. Trend 12 is your mother ship to help you put those groups together. To get copies of the modules that can be branded with your name, with that specific group of people where you can go in as a host, host them to use the materials and help them along the journey so they are ready. So this is an important part. You all know the CEC competencies. There are seven CEC standards. The Council for Exceptional Children. There are 79 knowledge and gills competencies but they are spread across those seven standards. You can envision each standard as a page. What candidates do is they collect 20 or develop 20 to 35 artifacts and they cluster those artifacts around those artifacts they select matching competencies. And they use each competent see once from a drop-down menu to match up with those artifacts and explain them. That is an interveners responsibility. Here is a screenshot of what I just said. You can imagine each one of these tabs -- this is the Venture screenshot. There's the dashboard. Under your portfolios there's an intervenor certification bar here that shows a completion rate and as the intervenor builds his or her or their e-portfolio, they get a progress bar on how complete they are. They have the seven standards pages, they have an about me section, they have a messaging tool where they can message either the PAR2A Center or they can message their mentor right in here. The mentor has access to this information as the intervenor is building. They can receive confidential and supportive advice as they go through. Ritu, I'm going to turn this back over to you and do a time check. We are a little more than halfway through our presentation. I'm chatty Cathy. We have a lot to say but please know we are available for calls after this. >> In the last two years we have been working on this, as Amy has been through the stages of development and finally we have established a national review board and it consists of 27 reviewers and 15 advisors and 16 states -- they represent 16 states. It is not one institution or one person. It is a national review board. The reviewers are all experts in the area of intervention and knowledge of national intervenor standards. And also who have real commitment to intervenor enhancing -- enhancing intervenor practice. Advisors are mainly from a community-based organization and I won't spend too much time on this. In talking about the roles and responsibilities of the reviewers, I want to thank the reviewers who are attending the webinar. This is something you are doing out of your commitment again to the field. There is no [Indiscernible] involved but you are giving us your effort and time and we are grateful for that. Basically the responsibilities are signing a confidentiality and non-conflict and impartiality agreement. Making sure that the portfolio that the reviewer gets is not somebody they know. They have no vested interest in it and also using a standard, fair, almost scientific rubric that has been developed over the last two years. The agreement really is making sure that you are aware of what your responsibilities are in terms of maintaining confidentiality and impartiality of the whole process. Reviewers will also go through a training which we are putting together a packet on that. The reviewers will be attending -- there are five meetings. One has taken place which was an orientation meeting on November 3 -- four. We will have for more trainings that will be conducted over the next year. These are meetings and the idea is staying in touch, asking how things are going, providing further information and staying involved and engaged. That is the whole idea of the meetings. And each reviewer will be responsible for up to five -- scoring five e-portfolios per year. At the end we have also requested to get more information and feedback and input from reviewers and there will be a voluntary survey. Advisors do not review portfolios but they will also have responsibilities to look at the data that is collected and ask questions and help us improve the process further. That is a -- the advisors responsibility. We have requested them to sign the confidentiality and non-conflict of interest agreement. We have invited them -- many of our advisors were at the virtual orientation meeting and we would like them to attend at least two of the four other meetings with the reviewers. We've also requested our advisors to look at the training that the reviewers go through. Even though they are not going to be reviewing any portfolios we have asked them to look at the training and give us feedback on that if anything needs to be improved on that. Amy? >> Very quickly, both reviewers and advisers are a part of the training process as Ritu said. There is a NICE board handbook that both of the reviewers and advisers review. There is a recorded tour of Venture and short screen cast. There is a checklist and the CEC knowledge and skill competencies. What we are excited about is that there will be a reviewer sandbox or a place in Venture to practice scoring artifacts. This is again so that we can look at the reliability and the validity and the strength of our training to make sure that this is a fair and transparent process so that interveners after they build these e-portfolios, they get a fair shake. They get a assessment. They get a good review and feedback that they can use. We are obviously very committed to accountability. The slide says we are using a process with fidelity. We are using a process that was designed with intervenor and state buy-in and we are designing and using a process that is defensible and understandable to the community and you are all a part of that. We are very excited that this e-portfolio is technology-based and it is not a paper portfolio. The system which takes more time to build and it has taken two years for us to test and retest and design a good platform but we think our investment is going to pay off. We know that technology e-portfolios can be used to create really creative ways to tell the story. The need for intervenor certification, I've covered this. This was a part of our 2012 recommendations which were published with OSEP's blessing. We've already talked about what an e-portfolio is. This little icon is really interesting though because it is talking about the use of or it depicts the use of pictures, documents, observation forms that may be -- maybe a supervisor has done or videos. That's all a part of what is usable within the e-portfolio. We've already talked about standards so I won't go deeply into this slide. You know it is important for us to say that we adhere to national standards that have been through a process. This e-portfolio certification is a really -- it's a way for us to link to those standards and think about those standards and make the learning visible. It's very important that interveners with their administrators have a way to document their competency. According to national standard. Here are a couple of NICE pictures of some folks in salt lake city . They were part interveners -- they were a part of designing this and they did it through use and in the low is a picture of all of the state mentors and partners and university partners who were involved and that is just in the Beta test. We've had another go around since then. More of this can be found on our website. I would rather go ahead and get to a couple of questions that you may have. I welcome you at any time, as Robin said, if you have a question now that is plaguing you or that is gnawing at your mind, please put it in the chat pod. We will look over and try to address those as we go forward. But I want to get to some more information about the e-portfolio. One of the things that's important here to say is that this process, this tool, is an assessment not of a training program competence. Not the strength of a training program competence. It is an assessment of an individual's competence. Do you see the distinction there? it doesn't really matter where the intervenor got their training. We do recommend that they have the training and that they have the experience with the Deaf-Blind child. That is how they will be able to pass the e-portfolio. But some people have suggested that this e-portfolio is not a higher Ed pathway. That's not true either. A person can participate in this who has participated in coursework or training. This is very open and it allows for both types of people -- or other types of people to be recognized for their competence. The validity -- we looked at the validity of the system. We developed the validity by adhering to the competencies, by looking at real-world knowledge as an authentic assessment. We know that nurses and teachers also use e-portfolios to document their competency. We've also really thought about this as an assessment process that's essentially what interveners are paying for is the certification. They are not paying to access the learning materials. They are not paying to access the mentoring. They are not paying to access the modules or any of that. All of that is free. They are just paying to take that next step in to be assessed. -- And to be assessed. We know the CEC knowledge and skills definitely provide construct validity to this assessment framework. Ritu, did you want to take this reliability slide? How is your voice? >> You go ahead. >> I'm sorry for you not being able to take more of these. As we said, we look at -- every e-portfolio is scored by at least two reviewers and we look at the amount of agreement versus the number of disagreement in the e-portfolio. What we are looking for, for a valid measure of what the score is, is 80% agreement. If we don't have 80% agreement, we say it could be that these two reviewers are really saying this -- seeing this in a different way so we recruit a third reviewer. Again, the whole purpose is to determine if the individual has sufficient knowledge and skills. As I explained, competencies are 79 -- 79 competencies are used to match 20 to 35 artifacts. Those artifacts are loaded into standards pages which is used to create the e-portfolio. There are a couple of other sections which I think you will find interesting. There are not only be seven standards pages that I mentioned where they upload artifacts as the slide explains. There is an about me section. That is something we really learned about in the Beta test and in the field test. Interveners needed to be able to upload information to describe where -- what training have they received? To have letters of recommendation from their instructors, from mentors or supervisors in the field of death Linus. It is really important -- deaf-blindness. It is really important that this is not scored. The about me section is not something where a reviewer goes and and judge is a person based on their background or their letters of recommendation or anything like that. But the about me section is for is to help a reviewer do a good review and understand who the intervenor is serving. It could be an adult or child. What settings are they working in? How are they applying their training? Or applying their philosophy to their practice? The first step is when a reviewer is starting an e-portfolio review, they look at the about me section to understand who is this intervenor? Where is he or she working? What are they doing? Who are they serving? Is it a charge -- child with charge syndrome? It is -- is it a child with fluent sign language? It helps contextualize that. Any questions on that? Please feel free to ask in the chat pod. I'm going to check the time. As we said, the next section is really the meat of the portfolio that is scored and it's the CEC standards pages where interveners have uploaded artifacts from their own practice that represent their mastery or skill. It could be observations that they've made. It could be assignments they've done. Ways that they demonstrate knowledge, videos, pictures. One artifact may be used to represent up to five competencies within the standards page. Each competency can be represented only one time from a drop-down list. This is more information about the tops of artifacts that may be used, scores are given for each artifact. All of those scores are averaged which yields a score for that standards page and then scores for each of the standards page are averaged to determine the overall score. Some of this information is more about what is scored. This third one here, artifact element, that simply refers to if and intervenor uploads a picture working in the cafeteria at school with a student and helping a student participate in the cafeteria, communicate with the lunch ladies there, get their food, travel to their seat and sit down. The intervenor can use the artifact element to outline where was this artifact gathered. It is just more information for the reviewer that helps them understand the artifact when they have never met the intervenor and have never observed them. >> Do you want me to do this? >> All had. >> One of the important considerations all along in this process as we were developing it was the focus is on demonstration of competency. It's not how great the video is or the quality of the video or how well-written something is. What we really want to focus on is the competencies that an individual intervenor defines as being addressed by an artifact -- are they demonstrated or not? Similarly the second part is an explanation of the documentation. The focus is not on how great the languages. The importance is are they able to establish the connection between what they are showing and how it is connected to a standard? I think all along the focus is competency-based and that is one of the biggest considerations. >> Absolutely, Ritu. Go ahead. >> There are three sections in the first section is the demonstration and documentation, the artifacts and looking at what is the evidence of the demonstration of the competency? To really show that and intervenor can do it with one artifact or they can use more than one. They can use a picture as well as a product that the child created based on their teaching. >> Exactly. Just a quick example of what Ritu was talking about. You all know that orientation and mobility skills can live differently for different children. Some people use a wheelchair, some people use a long cane to travel. Other people scoot or crawl. The demonstration of the competence of the intervenor and applying those orientation and mobility supports can look differently for different people or different children. So that is the part -- that's why we have a very qualified and trained review board who knows deaf-blindness so that if somebody sees and intervenor supporting somebody who is scooting across carpet but they understand from the about me section this is a child that is not yet walking, this is a child that maybe is just getting out of the wheelchair. This is a part of how this child travels. The about me section helps you understand that and when the presentation comes of what the intervenor is doing with that child, you can understand they are demonstrating appropriate orientation and mobility supports to this child based on what the team is recommending. So that's how it is individualized. >> Section 2 is also the score section and this is guided by writing prompts which really give the opportunity to the intervenor to provide sufficient information to the reviewer about the documentation that they have uploaded. On the next slide it shows what the prompts are. There is one mandatory question. We want to give them an opportunity to reflect on what they have uploaded and really talk about how does the sample or artifact demonstrate or address the CEC skills and competencies that they identify for that particular artifact? There's a list of five question out of which they can select only two. The idea is for them to reflect on their practice and describe their artifacts in a manner that they can further demonstrate that they know what they are doing. >> I think I've already covered this slide. We covered the format of the artifact so let's get to the summary. Would you like to take that? >> You do that. >> So the overall scores, this again came through the beta and field testing with our partners. The scores are weighted where 60% is weighted to demonstration. Does the intervenor actually demonstrate, 40% is on the explanation. Clearly this is weighted more towards somebody actually showing what they know and can do. One important caveat, people can answer those questions by typing responses to those questions, they can also create an audio file that explains themselves answering those questions, they can also create a video file. So say the intervenor is culturally deaf, we have interveners who will submit e-portfolios that have text and also have video-based reflections and them answering the questions. 50% to 74% is an emerging score, it is not passing. 75% to 89% is proficient and is a passing score. 90% to 100% is advanced. Right now what interveners will receive is a pass/fail. They will also receive detailed feedback on their e-portfolio in the letter that will not come from NCDB , it will come from the PAR2A Center that is managing the review board. We want to open it up for questions now. Some of you have seen this slide many times before but it really outlines the differences in roles and responsibilities as NCDB supports the network , supports interveners, mentors, state Deaf-Blind project partners with free materials in support to become prepared to use the assessment process that is being housed in managed with the PAR2A Center. NCDB provides support and funding for the management of that system. So questions now? We have a few minutes left and we actually did make it to the end of our slide. We know we have set a lot of things. Please type your questions or feel free to ask questions by unmute in your phone by pressing *6. Anything is welcome. >> As you are coming up with your questions, feel free to interrupt me at any time. I want to say I'm very proud that parents of Deaf-Blind children are serving as advisors in this process. And although the advisors will not be reviewing e-portfolios they will be looking at overall metrics and data that come out of the system. They will be asking questions. The national review board, reviewers and advisors, will also be making recommendations about how and intervenor at the end of five years -- let's say they passing get there five-year certification, a NICE certificate that they can hopefully use for a pay raise and to document what they know , the review board will be making recommendations to the field at the end of this year, September 2017. This will help talk about what what a recertification process look like. So how does and intervenor at the end of five years upload new information to a section of the e-portfolio to document their competency, their ongoing professional growth and to recertify. >> Amy, this is Robin. I'm wondering if you have a vision for what you might use the distinction between the scoring level of proficiency and advanced. Right now you have a pass/fail. But you are giving a level of proficiency in advanced distinction. Do you have a vision of what that might be used for in the future or why the distinction at this point? >> I think the distinction -- I will answer first and then I will turn it over to Ritu. The distinction first came from our partners to think about what scoring would look like and what pass/fail would mean for interveners. In some ways it might be useful in terms of professional development. Once and intervenor puts in this much time to create an e-portfolio and has two experts review it and give feedback to them, they could look at that as an area of these of the areas where I'm really strong. I passed here. So I know when I sat for my interpreter test in taxes, I had not been through an interpreter training program. I sat for the examiner past. They offered me a lot of feedback the on areas where I was weak and where I was strong and that could help me carve out a future. So again that might be useful to interveners in terms of planning, in terms of going back for more training and thinking about how they want to grow themselves. And Ritu, I know that will be something you find -- discuss with you review board. >> We can't hear you. You have to *6. >> I think you already explained that. The thinking behind it is even if they pass letting them know how well they did and if there's room for further enhancement or improvement. That's the whole idea. I think that was the thinking that went into it. >> Thanks, Robin. We have two minutes left. Any questions or thought, ideas from Stateline -- state Deaf-Blind partners on how you might use this? >> I say that our project officer, Joanne McCann, who has been integral to this process and has seen the system as it has developed is on the line. We just want to thank JoAnn and OSEP for their leadership in always looking out for the interveners role and how their role can be recognized. Thank you to Joanne. >> I know that many of you will have questions and that's why this next slide is here. Who to contact, please do contact me at NCDB. If you would like to start thinking about how you may use the system. If you have groups of people who may be interested interveners, we can put something together that supports you and supports them and it may be indeed that you want to try this out with another state partner or another university partner. We welcome that. We are excited to see how this next cohort that is launching tomorrow will do together. Questions regarding the NICE review board , about reviewers, the qualification, advisors responsibilities -- Dr. Ritu Chopra is lovely and knowledgeable and has deep respect for the community. Please feel free to email her or call her at the University of Colorado at Denver. >> We are right on the nose then. There are some comments. I agree with out -- without OSEP's support we would be nowhere in this area. I agree with that. Without the national attention, we could never have gotten this far. Karen from Illinois, if I want to review this later will it be on the NCDB website? Absolutely. The recording will be there and the captioning will be there. Materials will be there and we will be available. Tony from Mississippi, thank you all for your work on this huge project. What a NICE alternative . No pun intended. Thank you everyone as we wrap up today. You know where to find us. We appreciate you. Take care. [Event Concluded]