Webinar Series
Creating Effective and Empowering Organizations: How to Love What You Do and Where You Do It
Kimberly Nix Berens and Kendra Newsome (Fit Learning)
Abstract: Two of the most significant risks to a business's survival are low-quality services and a toxic work environment. Highly efficacious services and a nurturing organizational culture are paramount to a business's success, and the relationship between quality service delivery and corporate culture is inherently intertwined. Undertrained staff and high staff turn-over diminish the quality of services, which in turn impacts staff turn-over. High staff turn-over affects a business' ability to invest the time needed to produce competent staff and harms organizational culture. It is critical, therefore, that business owners intentionally design competency-based training programs and nurturing, value-driven culture. The instructional design of competent training requires an understanding of the components or tool skills needed to achieve the composite repertoires of the target service model and a measurement system that allows for functional mastery analysis. A nurturing culture that promotes behavior in line with an organization's values must also be designed, actively assessed, and managed. This webinar will focus on these two features of business operation with real-world data and applications from Fit Learning, a learning laboratory that has thrived in the private sector for 17 years.
Instruction Level: Intermediate
Target Audience: Behavior analysts, BCBAs, aspiring entrepreneurs, organizational leaders, those who are looking to increase their overall effectiveness and skill set regardless of population or teaching objectives
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the webinar, attendees will be able to: (1) describe several actions to create a nurturing, value-driven culture; (2) distinguish between functional mastery and arbitrary mastery criteria; (3) critically analyze “mastery criteria” in their research and practice; (4) provide at least one example of how functional mastery criteria could be applied in their professional work.
1 BACB CE available.
Biography: Dr. Berens is a scientist-educator and Founder of Fit Learning. She co-created a powerful system of instruction based in behavioral science and the Technology of Teaching, which has transformed the learning abilities of thousands of children worldwide. For more than 20 years, her system of instruction has produced one year’s worth of academic growth in only 40 hours of training. Her learning programs effectively target such essential areas as early learning skills, basic classroom readiness, phonemic awareness, reading fluency, comprehension, inferential language, basic and advanced mathematics, logical problem solving, grammar, and expressive writing. From her early beginnings in a broom closet at the University of Nevada – Reno, Dr. Berens has helped grow Fit Learning to an organization with more than 30 locations worldwide. She is a frequent invited speaker and a regular contributor to many popular press publications such as Psychology Today, Thrive Global, 74 Million, and Medium. Her first book Blind Spots: Why students fail and the science that can save them was released in October 2020. Dr. Berens currently lives in Long Island with her husband and two children, where she oversees Fit Learning locations in Long Island, New York City, and Connecticut.
Biography: Dr. Newsome earned her PhD in 2010 from the University of Nevada, Reno. She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA-D) and a Licensed Behavior Analyst in the state of Nevada. She has served as the President for the Nevada Association for Behavior Analysis and is a former Co-President of the Standard Celeration Society. Dr. Newsome is a Founding Director and Owner of Fit Learning, Reno – a Precision Teaching Learning Laboratory that has served over 1,400 families since 2004. Dr. Newsome is a regular contributor to scientific and professional communities on learning science and evidence-based instruction. Her research initiatives include applications of Relational Frame Theory to education, the incorporation of Precision Teaching into Response to Intervention frameworks, and contextual analyses in clinical settings through the use of Standard Celeration Chart. Dr. Newsome has given numerous invited presentations and lectures on science-based approaches to education. Her professional actions are guided by the commitment to transform educational practices in the world so that all students have the opportunity to develop the kinds of skills and expertise that will allow them to make a difference in their communities and beyond.
CE Package
This item is available to current ABAI members only.
Learning Center Video and Quiz