These answers draw in part from “KEYNOTE: Why You Should Give a S*&% About Knowing How to Easily Use the Tech at Your Practitioner Job” by Sarah Trautman, BCBA (BehaviorLive), and extend it with peer-reviewed research from our library of 27,900+ ABA research articles. Clinical framing, BACB ethics code references, and cross-links below are synthesized by Behaviorist Book Club.
View the original presentation →Poor tech proficiency creates a daily friction tax — repeated small frustrations with documentation platforms, billing systems, scheduling tools, and data collection software that compound across a workday. This friction consumes cognitive and emotional resources that are then unavailable for clinical reasoning, supervision quality, and caregiver communication. Research on healthcare burnout identifies EHR burden as a significant contributor to occupational stress in physicians and nurses; the structural parallels to ABA practice are strong. Clinicians who fight with their tools daily experience a different workload than those who are fluent, even when their clinical tasks are identical.
The highest-priority skills are those tied to the tools used most frequently in daily practice. For most BCBAs, this means proficiency with the organization's EHR for session documentation (including efficient note templates, structured fields, and error-prevention features), the data collection platform's graphing and analysis functions (to eliminate manual graphing), and scheduling and authorization tracking tools (to reduce the administrative burden of caseload management). Secondary priorities include remote supervision and telehealth platforms, communication systems, and billing review tools. The specific highest-value skills depend on the individual's current gaps and the tools used in their specific role.
Ethics Code 2.05 (Practicing Within Scope of Competence) extends to the technological components of practice. A BCBA who cannot accurately interpret the output of their data collection system is making clinical decisions on data they cannot correctly read — a competence issue regardless of their clinical knowledge. Ethics Code 2.09 (Maintaining Professional Records) requires appropriate electronic record management, including understanding the security features of clinical platforms relevant to HIPAA compliance. Ethics Code 2.05's implicit obligation to remain current in practice skills includes technology skills that are central to current ABA service delivery.
Technology self-efficacy is a person's confidence in their ability to use technology effectively to accomplish specific goals. It predicts both actual performance and the emotional response to technology challenges. Clinicians with high self-efficacy treat tech errors as solvable problems and respond with problem-solving; those with low self-efficacy experience the same errors as evidence of incompetence and respond with avoidance or anxiety. Because self-efficacy is skill-based rather than trait-based, it responds to deliberate practice and success experiences. Building self-efficacy in specific clinical tools reduces the emotional cost of the inevitable glitches and learning curves that all practitioners encounter.
Priority should be determined by workload impact. Identify the specific tools or functions that currently consume more time than they should, create the most frequent errors requiring correction, or produce the most frustration in daily practice. These are the highest-return development targets regardless of technical complexity. Sometimes the most impactful improvements are simple — discovering an automated function that replaces a manual step, learning keyboard shortcuts in a frequently used platform, or configuring notification settings to reduce unnecessary interruptions. Start with the skill that would reduce your daily friction most substantially.
Technology training should be a standard, structured component of onboarding rather than an informal expectation that new staff will figure things out independently. Platform-specific training on the tools used in the role — not generic digital literacy — is what produces workload reduction. This training should include direct practice with realistic clinical scenarios (not just feature tours), followed by feedback on efficiency. Ongoing training for existing staff when platforms update or change is equally important. Organizations that budget time and resources for technology training as a clinical quality investment rather than an administrative overhead see returns in documentation quality, billing accuracy, and staff retention.
Data collection platforms produce automated graphs, trend analyses, and phase change visuals that enable faster and more accurate clinical review than manual graphing from paper data sheets. BCBAs who are fluent in these automated analysis features can review more programs more thoroughly in the same time, improving the breadth and quality of their clinical oversight. Those who collect digital data but perform manual analysis are bearing the platform's learning costs without capturing its efficiency benefits. Platform fluency also reduces errors in data interpretation — automated graphs with correct phase lines and trend calculations are more reliable than manually constructed equivalents.
Remote and telehealth supervision requires proficiency in video conferencing platforms (including waiting room management, screen sharing, and recording functions), secure messaging tools for between-session communication, and asynchronous video review technologies that allow BCBAs to review recorded session clips and provide timestamped feedback. Familiarity with remote data collection review — accessing and interpreting real-time data from an RBT's session — is increasingly important as data collection platforms have developed remote access features. BCBAs who are not comfortable with these modalities cannot deploy them effectively when circumstances warrant, which limits supervisory flexibility and responsiveness.
Maintaining currency requires treating technology skill development as an ongoing professional practice rather than a one-time acquisition. Practical strategies include subscribing to release notes from the platforms used daily, allocating 15-30 minutes monthly for deliberate exploration of platform features not yet in routine use, and maintaining a peer network of practitioners who share tips about tools used in common. When organizations change platforms, advocating for adequate transition training rather than accepting minimal onboarding protects both individual competence and clinical quality. The goal is a learning posture that reduces the disruption of each technology transition rather than a fixed level of expertise.
BCBAs with Ethics Code 4.09 responsibilities to address conditions interfering with service quality have standing to raise technology infrastructure concerns as clinical quality issues, not merely IT requests. Frame technology concerns in clinical terms: a documentation system that produces high error rates compromises billing accuracy and audit defensibility; a data platform that doesn't support efficient clinical review limits supervision quality. Bring specific, quantified examples — documentation time per note, billing rejection rates attributable to documentation issues, supervision coverage gaps created by scheduling system failures — rather than general complaints. Clinical leaders who make the clinical case for technology investment tend to be more effective advocates than those who frame it as a convenience request.
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KEYNOTE: Why You Should Give a S*&% About Knowing How to Easily Use the Tech at Your Practitioner Job — Sarah Trautman · 1 BACB Supervision CEUs · $20
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.