Effective remote staff training of objective session notes
Remote teaching-interaction training gets every RBT to mastery on objective session notes with no in-person contact.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Piazza et al. (2021) taught three RBTs to write clear, objective session notes.
All training happened through Zoom. The team used the teaching-interaction procedure: explain, model, practice, and feedback.
No one met in person. The goal was full mastery judged by a 20-item checklist.
What they found
Every RBT hit mastery after the remote lessons. Notes stayed accurate one month later.
The telehealth package worked as well as classic in-person BST.
How this fits with other research
Llovera et al. (2022) and Piazza et al. (2025) show the same remote BST recipe works for other skills. Llovera taught BCBAs to run functional analyses; Piazza’s 2025 paper taught trainees to supervise ethics cases. All studies ended with 100% mastery, pointing to a reliable model.
Carr et al. (2017) tried a simple checklist for note writing and saw mixed results. The new BST package beats that older method: every participant passed this time, so the 2021 study supersedes the checklist approach.
Wilson et al. (2023) went one step further. They trained caregivers via telehealth and the kids’ tacts improved right away. Together the papers draw a line from staff mastery to client gains, something the 2021 study did not measure.
Why it matters
You can stop driving to the office just to train staff on paperwork. Run a short Zoom teaching-interaction session and RBTs will write bullet-proof notes that pass an audit. Pair this with caregiver training that links to client skills and you build a fully remote quality loop.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Session notes are a required component of documenting behavior analytic sessions. The direct training of writing objective session notes is important to the success of direct line staff completing adequate documentation and meeting requirements set forth by agencies, certification boards, and insurance funders. However, in-person training is not always immediately available due to contextual restrictions. This study evaluated the effectiveness of implementing the teaching interaction procedure when training staff remotely to objectively document client progress within session notes. Three Registered Behavior Technicians™ (RBT®s) were trained via telehealth to complete session notes objectively. Results showed that all 3 participants met the mastery criterion during probes measuring the objective documentation of home-based behavior analytic sessions. These findings suggest that a training package, such as the teaching interaction procedure, can be effectively implemented remotely when conducting staff training.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2021 · doi:10.1002/jaba.793