DR. JOANNE GERENSER: Hi. My name's Joanne Gerenser. And I'll be the instructor for this course. I want to go over some things, before we get started, that will, I think, be important for you to think about and help you be more successful in the class.

So, with each of the segments, there'll be articles that you'll have attached and that you should take the time to read. They're going to give you a lot more detail than I will give you in the actual lectures. You should take the time to print out the PowerPoint handouts so that you can take notes while you listen to me ramble on because there will be quizzes periodically throughout the segments. And there'll be a final so it'll be helpful for you to go beyond the simple PowerPoints and take some notes.

There are video segments that will be embedded throughout. And you should make sure that you take the time to watch them. Some of them are YouTube examples. And some of them are examples from children in my program.

There are activities that are going to be located at the bottom of the videos, at different sections, at the end of the lesson or throughout the videos. Take the time to do them. They're going to help you be more prepared to take the final exam. They'll help you to evaluate whether or not you really understood what I talked about during the course of the lesson.

There's a discussion forum. Read it and participate in it. Try and do it daily because it will make the difference in the class, as far as I'm concerned. You can sit and watch the videos and take your notes and read the articles. But if you really want an interactive class, take the time to participate in the discussion forum.

And again, some of it is required. So make sure you read all of the requirements. And then, at the end of each lesson, there'll be an assignment so make sure you complete the assignments. There are very clear objectives that I want to accomplish in this first lesson. So I'm just going to review them for you. And you'll see at the beginning of every lesson, I'll go through these objectives.

In this lesson, we're going to talk about the DSM-4R. And the reason I include the DSM-4R is because we're still working with it. There are still families out there who have children that have been diagnosed with the DSM-4R.

You're still going to be working with kids who have an Asperger's classification. And so you have to understand it. In time, it will start to dissipate and we'll be working only with the DSM-5. But it's important for those of us working now in the field that we understand the DSM-4R and the DSM-5.

I want to go over why we shifted to the DSM-5 and what were some of the reasons why we moved to the DSM-5. And then, obviously, I want to talk about what the DSM-5 did. What were the changes? I want to review the qualitative differences between people with autism and other developmentally disabled people.

I think it's important, when you're working with kids with autism, that you understand as much as you can about what makes them different. Every kid with autism is going to be different so you're going to be challenged every time you work with a child, which is what I find so fascinating and interesting but also challenging because there isn't a road map or a blueprint that will allow us to navigate each child we work with.

So the more you take the time to understand autism and understand how we think they're processing the environment and what are their unique learning characteristics, the better equipped you'll be able to be to solve problems as they come along. I'll talk about the unique specific speech and language characteristics that are consistent for children with autism.