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Project SUCCESS was a three year endeavor to demonstrate and evaluate the extent to which electronic study strategies improve the education and enhance the learning potential of students with learning disabilities in middle schools and high schools. The project worked with special education teachers and students at demonstration sites in the state of Oregon to explore the efficacy of computer-based information organizers as tools for studying and learning across the curriculum. Students were taught at least three cognitively-based, computer enhanced study strategies using software designed to facilitate information recording, organization and manipulation. Specifically, students learned to use electronic outlining programs, electronic concept mapping programs and documents using hypertext features to support the development of active reading skills in content area subjects.
Project SUCCESS had seven major objectives: (a) to investigate the extent to which electronic study strategies affect the academic performance of secondary students with learning disabilities, (b) to identify the academic study skills and content area knowledge most affected by using electronic study strategies, (c) to examine the extent to which and the ways in which electronic study strategies affect motivation, self-concept, school satisfaction, attendance, and peer relationships, (d) to explore the ways in which electronic study strategies impact teacher/student roles and classroom activities, (e) to identify the effects of different implementation conditions on student measures of achievement and affect, (f) to identify the extent to which factors such as age, grade level, gender, learning styles, and instructional needs influence the effects of electronic study strategies, and (g) to identify the implementation factors that facilitate and/or inhibit the use of electronic study strategies by secondary students with learning disabilities.
Project SUCCESS was designed so that, at any given implementation site, electronic study strategies were introduced to students gradually, and influencing variables were systematically manipulated within an overall framework of formative and summative evaluation. Within the 36 month funding period Project SUCCESS consisted of five major phases: (a) Planning, (b) Preparation and Piloting, (c) Individualized Implementation, (d) Comparative Implementation, and (e) Documentation and Dissemination.