Question TherAppy and Conversation TherAppy from Tactus {Appy Friday Review}

Tactus Therapy has a reputation for quality apps for adult rehab.  When I met a few of their representatives at ASHA this year, I had no idea that they made apps that could also be used with a student population.  Recently I was invited to try out a few for this review!  I was able to try out Question TherAppy and Conversation TherAppy and was pleasantly surprised!  Here’s more…

The first app that I’ll discuss is “Question TherAppy” which is described as apps that target both asking & answering questions.  This 2-in-1 app (of Asking TherAppy & Answering TherAppy) works well together as users advance from answering simple yes/no questions to asking well-formed questions.

 The intro screen is shown above.

 When you begin Asking TherAppy, you have many choices.  From this screen you can select an activity, manage users, and enter the user hub where data is kept.

 In the “Investigate” portion, errorless learning & discovery are promoted.  Question formats and expansion are demonstrated to the user here.  As you can see above, each wh portion selected adds to the sentence and demonstrates how to both construct and understand statements and wh questions.  Then you are able to match the wh questions with the portion of the sentence that they correspond with in the following screen.  This is simple, yet awesome!

In “Yes/No” several formats are used to target Yes/No question creation.  You can choose from a field of 4, utilize a spinner with prompts, or answer with no prompting available.  I love that each section allows for these different formats in an increasing hierarchy of difficulty.  This allows for more carry-over practice with students.

In “Wh Questions” several formats are used to target wh question creation.  You can again choose from a field of 4, utilize a spinner with prompts, or answer with no prompting available.

You can utilize the “Spinner” section to create your own questions.

 In the User Hub of all TherAppy apps you can add users, view their session data, and e-mail this data to family/friends involved with the student.  Sessions are divided by task targeted in the session.

Next is the Answering TherAppy portion of this 2-in-1 app!  It allows practice of understanding & answering questions with 400 built-in questions and the ability to add your own for unlimited personalization.

 One thing that I absolutely love about this app is the ability to fill out the personal information and survey for each user.  This information is used to create custom questions that pertain the specific student!

 You can also choose which levels and questions are given for each activity.  This allows limiting to specific skills and types of questions.

In the Yes/No questions module, there are 7 levels of questions which get progressively harder.  This section starts with personal questions and moves to nouns, verbs and adjectives.

In the Wh Questions module, 9 types of questions (who, what, where, when, why, how, which, whose, how much, how far, how many, & how long) are targeted.  You can again choose your levels in this module.  Receptively, you can have 2, 3, or 4 choices displayed.  In expressive, you are given data tracking below the question.  You can easily switch between response modes and have separate scoring for each.  In the expressive mode there is recording, self-scoring, and free response.

Again, the user hub tracks user progress and can be e-mailed to share!

Next is Conversation TherAppy!  This app targets higher-level expressive language, pragmatic, problem-solving, speech & cognitive-communication goals for older children, teens, and adults.  It features over 300 real photographs with 10 questions for each (that’s 3000+ questions!!!).

All of the photos above show the different questions for each of the 10 possible areas.  You can limit which ones are available at the start of any session.  These sessions can have up to 6 users at a time participating and scoring separately but without having to switch stimulus to switch scoring! (Genius!)  Simply tap each user to activate their scoring portion at the top of the screen when using multiple users.  The 10 types of questions targeted are describe, define, remember, decide, feel, infer, predict, narrate, evaluate, & brainstorm.  You can utilize up to 50 user profiles which keep track of names, questions, notes & session scores!  You can also create/edit question text, enter your own questions (in settings), adjust minimum age level for each picture/question, and hide/show pictures to customize sessions.  This app is incredibly customizable!

As in all other TherAppy apps, data is kept in the user hub for use at any time, including e-mailing session data.