The rapid increase in the presence of autistic students in U.S. education systems has placed a great demand for education services, and federal law states that such services and instruction must be based on evidence-based practices (EBPs). Teachers, however, report that they lack the information and preparation for using EBPs and instruction for autistic students in their classrooms. Given technological advances in recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise for supporting teachers’ use of EBPs to design and deliver personalized programs for autistic students based on their individual abilities and needs. The purpose of this project is to:

• develop an AI-assisted application (called the IEP2EBP) that teachers will use to select the most efficacious autism intervention practices,
• link the most effective practices to students’ individual learning goals, and
• access resources for applying the practices, and assessing student outcomes. 

The process will include developing AI methodology to assist in systematic review and meta-analysis of focused intervention practices for autistic students. The use of AI methodology in this stage allows for the IEP2EBP application to include the most current scientific knowledge of effective intervention practices for autistic children and youth. The IEP2EBP application will be designed for use in pre-service teacher education programs, in-service teacher education, and application in classroom settings. Partners in this project will be investigators from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Buffalo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Iowa, and members of a national consortium of teacher education programs for pre-service teachers who will be instructing autistic students and a second national consortium of state and local education agencies who will provide in-service training to teachers who work with autistic students.

The outcomes of this project will be a fully developed AI-assisted application (the IEP2EBP) and process for embedding this application in pre-service (university coursework and supervised practica) and in-service teacher education, as well as making the application widely available to the community of special educators. This AI-assisted program and process will address the national need for preparing education to integrating the most current knowledge about effective intervention/instructional practice into teachers’ delivery of personalized learning programs for autistic students.