The Power of Peers: Supporting Meaningful Friendships for AAC Users - with Dr Elizabeth Biggs

Practical, research-based strategies to help children and young people who use AAC build real friendships, not just helping relationships.
Write your awesome label here.

Video

Text material

Quiz

PD Certificate

Course Lessons

Being in the same classroom isn't the same as belonging. Too often, children and young people who use AAC are present but not included, and surrounded by helpers rather than friends.

In this course, Dr Elizabeth Biggs (Vanderbilt University) unpacks how authentic friendships develop and what adults can do to foster them without forcing them. Drawing on her Enhancing Peer Networks Project, she shares tested strategies you can use straight away:

  • the ten dimensions of belonging
  • storybook lessons that make AAC and disability part of everyday conversation
  • peer networks
  • the three Ways to Talk and Play: Copy Talk, Play Talk Give, and Respond

The course is built from Elizabeth's workshop for the AGOSCI 2026 National Tour. It combines short readings, video clips from the session, reflection activities and knowledge checks. It's designed for teachers, speech pathologists, education assistants, families and AAC users. Work through it at your own pace.
Write your awesome label here.

Dr Elizabeth Biggs

PhD (Special Education), MA (Special Education)
Assistant Professor, Department of Special Education, Vanderbilt University, USA
Dr Elizabeth Biggs is an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education at Vanderbilt University in the United States. Her research develops evidence-based practices that build authentic peer relationships and meaningful language and literacy learning for children and youth who use, or could benefit from, AAC.

She leads the Enhancing Peer Networks Project, a federally funded US project that partners with schools to support young students with autism who use or need AAC. She also co-edited the TIES Center's Power of Peers peer engagement implementation guides. Before moving into research, Elizabeth taught students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. That classroom experience still shapes how practical her work is. At Vanderbilt, she teaches courses on inclusion and on literacy instruction for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.