Behavior Technology courses are appropriate for anyone with a keen interest in improving their teaching skill. This includes those who teach any species, human or nonhuman, and desire their students to reach exceptional levels of performance. For example: trainers of companion, performance, and working dogs; trainers of zoo animals; horse trainers; teachers of children/adults in classrooms or private settings; teachers of those with special needs; supervisors or managers; hospital and caretaking staff; and anyone with deep interest in successful self-improvement strategies.

These courses are not designed for a person with a casual interest (i.e., less than intense) in the scientific basis of learning and becoming an excellent practitioner of the science of behavior change. For example: these courses are not designed for a person looking for “tips” on how to improve their training or not sure of his or her level of interest in an intensively focused course in the field of behavioral science and technology.

What to Expect
Expect 5 full days (45 hours—there are no less than 20 hours of hands-on training time in any BehavTech course) of immersion in the science of behavior: Class days are structured and include daily hands-on training, formal lectures, planning periods, and discussion. All BehavTech courses emphasize a behavior-analytic approach to behavior and the application of scientific learning principles.

Lectures and discussion concentrate on relevant content and critical thinking. Class discussions emphasize science and not opinion, and discussions are conducted in a respectful and academic manner. Some of the scientific information about learning processes and behavior presented may be new and may even contradict information the student has learned before. Like any good college course, the student should expect to be challenged and have fun while learning. In addition, expect the instructor to maximize individual learning opportunities that arise with the unique group of students in each class.

Students are each assigned two chickens and given very specific parameters in which to train. The purpose of these instructions is to refine students’ ability to observe behavior and to improve their technical skills so that they are able to instantly respond to their observations.

Students should expect to be mentally and physically challenged and to be required to change their own behavior if they are to be successful in improving their skills. Students may not necessarily achieve every target behavior assigned; however, asking individual students to reach as high as they can leads to a meaningful sense of accomplishment and increased confidence in skills.

What Not to Expect
Do not expect a casual, fun-and-games approach to course work and unstructured interaction with animals. Do not expect to enter the courses with a set of training skills and simply apply what you already do to training chickens. Contrary to what one might have heard, training a chicken will not somehow make people train differently or make people better trainers. People bring their present technical skills and every other kind of baggage with them to every new training situation.

Getting rid of bad training habits by training a chicken may sound nice, but it is not accurate; improving technical skills in any area of study, profession, or sport, requires precise instruction and hard work. Example: Will a surgeon who usually operates on people suddenly change his or her operating techniques if faced with operating on a dog?

Students should not expect “chicken camp,” as it has been popularized over the years. The purpose of Behavior Technology courses is to deepen a trainer’s understanding of learning processes and to progressively improve a trainer’s technical skill, not to transfer a student’s already established training habits to training a chicken (or any other species).

The focus of all Behavior Technology courses is the analysis of behavior: what are you doing and why you are doing it in every moment that you are training. The interest is not in having the student “get a chicken to do something in some way.” Please repeat: “Behavior Technology courses are not about training chickens.” The focus of all Behavior Technology courses is trainer behavior not chicken behavior.

Cost
All BehavTech courses are 5 days long and cost $1800. They include continental breakfast, a full lunch (with options), and snacks and drinks throughout the day. All other equipment, supplies, and training tools are provided.

If you are interested in applying to the Behavior Technology course series, please visit the website and read the admission procedures.

PLEASE NOTE: A maximum of 20 students will be accepted per course. All students will be evaluated at the end of each course and given a grade of pass or fail. (Students who choose to take a course for college credit, or the entire series for certification, will have a few additional assessment requirements (e.g., a written final exam after each course) Students will not pass or fail any Behavior Technology course on the basis of what a chicken does or does not do. Please repeat: “Behavior Technology courses are not about training chickens!”

Behavior Technology 101: Stimulus Discrimination and Generalization
No Prerequisite
How does an animal learn to distinguish one thing from another? Discrimination is the first principle of learning. We often take such “simple” concepts for granted. But those who really want to be great teachers/trainers must start where learning begins. The theme of this course is how animals discriminate and generalize stimuli and how a deeper understanding of this basic learning process can lead to more effective and efficient teaching.

Because a solid understanding of discrimination and generalization is fundamental to good training, in BehavTech 101, the students’ training time is focused on these basic processes. Students learn how to “ask the bird” questions, instead of making assumptions about “what the bird knows.” To do this well, students need to become increasingly sensitive to the bird’s subtle behavior changes so they can quickly adjust their own behavior and teach effectively. The more detailed trainers become at objectively analyzing their own behavior as well as the bird’s behavior, the greater their improvement in the application of behavior principles.

Class time alternates between formal lectures related to what students will observe in the training room and hands-on training. It is when the bird is in front of the students, impatiently (thank you, White Leghorns!) looking for clear instruction on how to get what they want, that the students put their understanding of theory directly to work (or not work!).

(FYI: It is really not hard to get a chicken to make these easy discriminations in any old haphazard way, but it is hard to learn how to apply learning principles precisely!)

Behavior Technology 102: Stimulus Control
Prerequisite: BehavTech 101
After discrimination and generalization, the student has a better understanding of the most basic learning processes and is ready to explore how a discriminated stimulus comes to control a particular behavior. This course busts a lot of myths about “controlling behavior” as students are introduced to what experimental behavior analysis has taught us about the most effective and efficient ways to put a behavior “on cue” – or in other words, to put a behavior under stimulus control – which is a more accurate and helpful way to describe what is really going on.

By definition, a behavior is under stimulus control (on cue) when the behavior occurs in the presence of a certain stimulus and does not occur when that stimulus is not present. Simple, right? Unfortunately many behaviors that a trainer may want under stimulus control by specific stimuli are not. In other words, the trainer gives a cue, but sometimes the behavior does not happen. Why does the animal not do a behavior the trainer swears the animal “knows?” This course is about getting a behavior to occur when you ask the animal to perform it, reliably and accurately.

Lectures, hands-on training and discussions in this course concentrate on choosing appropriate stimuli as cues, when and how to put a behavior under stimulus control (on cue), latency (the time between the cue and when the behavior starts), maintaining the accuracy (precision) of a behavior once it is under stimulus control, how to assess the reliability of a behavior, problem solving a behavior the trainer think is under stimulus control but, by the definition, is clearly not.

Good training is defined by good stimulus control. In this course, every exercise is “exactly the same”: Train a new behavior, put it under the control of a particular stimulus, then strengthen and maintain that precise behavior while under stimulus control. Once the student has the behavior under stimulus control, they tell the instructor they are ready to demonstrate it. The instructor comes over and says, “Okay then, do it… now.” Why is that so terrifying?! Because what the animal really learned from the information the trainer provided is now objectively revealed. It takes courage for all of us to put our work under such scrutiny. But this exposed self-evaluation of skills helps each student discover his or her strengths and weaknesses and leads to pathways for improvement.

This Behavior Technology course offers students many opportunities to repeat a systematic process of putting a new behavior under stimulus control. With each new exercise, the students deepen their understanding of why they have been instructed to follow a process instead of just hoping the dog “gets it” eventually. Knowledge of theory paired with success in hands-on training builds students’ confidence in their abilities. The goal is for students to take the knowledge and skills home to work on them on their own, then return with new, more sophisticated questions.

Behavior Technology 103: Setting and Shifting Criteria:
Prerequisites: BehavTech 101 and 102
Criteria: the never-ending process of changing what you are asking an animal to do. Setting and shifting criteria is a concept, an idea of what you have and where you’re going. It requires the teacher to process many things at one time so he or she can make a split second decision and react practically instantaneously—and that decision/reaction cannot be too early or too late, but just on time whether delivering a primary or a conditioned reinforcer! Whew! It’s exhausting just thinking about it!

This Behavior Technology Course is all about this elusive, but indispensable, friend, criteria. Then again, you can’t talk about criteria without talking about that other essential pal, rate of reinforcement. But criteria and rate of reinforcement don’t mean a thing without the rock: good timing. Is it becoming clear why Behavior Technology course are not a day, a weekend, or even 3 days long, and why they must be taking in a particular order?

The students come to Behavior Technology 103 with at least 10 full days of knowledge and hand-on skills. BehavTech 103 pushes these skills to the limit with its new challenges. The training requirements are deceptively simple tasks and a few training parameters. However, to reach criteria for evaluation, the trainers will need to push themselves beyond where they are comfortable.

This course focuses on how to set criteria and shift criteria to shape behavior effectively and efficiently, from tiny responses to long persistent behavior; how to stick with the criteria set; and how to know when to change it. The students must be able to evaluate themselves accurately: Did they actually do what they said they were going to do? If not, why, and how do they make sure they do what they “meant to” do next time? If yes, what do they do next? And how long does it take the trainer to recognize that what they are doing is not improving their situation and that they need to change what they are doing (in other words change criteria).

Adding to the challenge of setting and changing criteria are the challenging mechanical skills required: Timing must be very precise, and the delivery of the primary reinforcer is tricky when you want an animal to move fast. The animal might be quite a distance from the trainer when the trainer wishes to reinforce. (This never happens with the animals you work with, right!?) How will you maximize the use of conditioned and primary reinforcement? How do you strengthen ALL the behavior you want equally so the bird moves smoothly even though you can’t provide reinforcement everywhere you would like to?

BehavTech 103 provides direct instruction and works with students to help them learn to respond quickly and accurately to these challenges.

Here is an example of a final behavior from a student in one of the instructors courses in the Summer 2016.

Watch how the chicken changes her path from a figure 8 when the cones are blue, to a loop when the cones are orange. Also note how the student has taught the chicken to work for a long time before the delivery of any reinforcement.

Course Offerings continued in 2019

Behavior Technology 104: Chain Schedules and Multiple Schedules of Reinforcement
Prerequisites: BehavTech 101–103
What are “schedules of reinforcement” and why are they important enough that B. F. Skinner wrote an entire book about them just to demonstrate the predictability of “schedule effects?” In BehavTech 101, 102, and 103, students learned to build precise behavior, put the behavior under stimulus control, strengthen that precise behavior, and continue to increase the speed and accuracy of that behavior. NOW we are finally ready to get started!! In Behavior Technology 104, students put several behaviors together into behavior sequences for a performance. And in this course, students design their own behavioral performances.

BehavTech 104 is an opportunity for students to experiment and find new ways to put together all they have learned so far about learning processes and application. Students are free to train any behavior they would like and also to insert these behaviors into the basic structure in any way they would like. It is up to students to explore how to have fun, be creative, and challenge themselves, all at the same time. Students may start with big visions of what they can teach, but the realities of training may necessitate finding ways to modify the original plans (perhaps several times) to make it all work in time for the final performance. Yet somehow, this is the BehavTech course in which the most laughter is likely to be heard!

This student from the instructors Summer 2016 Workshop demonstrates the final behavior to the class.
Note the speed and confidence of the bird as it moves across the obstacle course and that no reinforcement is delivered until the chicken completes the final behavior of the sequence. Also note the trainer’s limited movement, which demonstrates that she has taught the the bird a long behavioral sequence and has not just taught the bird to direct itself toward the trainer and a moving cup of food.

Behavior Technology 105: Teaching Behavior Technology (minimum of 25 hours of training time)
Prerequisites: BehavTech 101–104
At this point in the student’s Behavior Technology education, the concentration switches from directly instructing a nonhuman animal to directly instructing a human animal. Up to now, the student, while acting as a coach to a partner, needed to provide objective feedback about what the partner was doing while training. Now the student must teach the partner how to train a chicken using the capacities available to the human animal, including a complete system of language.

Sometimes it seems easier to work with nonhuman animals, maybe because we can blame them for our mistakes or we can forgive them for not understanding us. In BehavTech 105, students must come face to face with their ability to communicate to another human what they want them to learn. Students need to be able to constructively tell someone what to do and what not to do, either of which that person may or may not be able to do. In addition, students must do what they are told to do to the best of their ability, even if they don’t agree with the instruction. Sometimes the reality of being a teacher can be emotional for students. But it can also be an opportunity for students to learn about themselves and improve their ability to instruct.

This BehavTech course will ask the students to look inside themselves to discover what sort of teachers they are, what motivates them as teachers, and whether they can maintain patience and objectivity when faced with “good” and “bad” students (e.g., those who do or don’t follow directions) or any number of other possible conflicts that may arise between humans! Can the student continue to maintain a positively reinforcing experience for their partner (and themselves) regardless of the environmental conditions?

Behavior Technology 106: Multispecies Applications (minimum of 25 hours of training time)
Prerequisites: BehavTech 101–105
BehavTech 106 is for people interested in training nonhuman species or who wish to challenge themselves to apply behavior technology to animals they are not accustomed to training. This course is designed to strengthen technical proficiency by presenting the trainer with new physical requirements and unfamiliar criteria.

The specific course requirements are being developed to accommodate our different species of animal teachers. Our present menagerie includes chickens, horses (regular and miniature size), donkeys, goats, and cows. Before the course begins we will have added pigs, rats, corvids, alpacas, sheep, peacocks, and guinea fowl.

The student should expect to spend 5 days applying the technology they have learned throughout the previous courses (BehavTech courses 101–105) to teaching multiple species.