Screenwise Conversations to Support Digital Safety
Overview
Problem
Bright Light Academy ( a fictional school for this concept project) is a private middle school serving a diverse population in Raleigh, North Carolina. Recently, there have been a number of incidents involving inappropriate sharing of information via group texts and cyberbullying. A group of parents are upset and demanding that something be done to curb these incidents among students. The administration, counselors and faculty are working to get a plan in place to deal with inappropriate texting and technology use as well as a digital citizenship education program. As the learning experience designer, I have been asked to design a blueprint for a digital citizenship campaign and create monthly training workshops and handouts to support parents in their guidance of students’ technology use.
The Solution
I developed an action map for the Screenwise Digital Campaign, so that key stakeholders understood the vision and goals of the campaign. After careful analysis and meeting with school faculty and staff, I determined that a yearlong campaign that involved a multi-pronged approach. It included:
***This project showcases an example of the monthly scenario based elearning experience for parents. The performance goal and process explanation is for that aspect of the campaign.
Performance Goal
The number of inappropriate texting incidents will drop by 50% by the end of the school year as parents learn to communicate effectively with their middle schoolers about technology to provide meaningful expectations and support students to think through their choices with texting and social media posts.
What parents will do to accomplish performance goal:
The elearning experience will help parents have conversations with their children that build trust and provide guidance in a supportive manner.
Bright Light Academy ( a fictional school for this concept project) is a private middle school serving a diverse population in Raleigh, North Carolina. Recently, there have been a number of incidents involving inappropriate sharing of information via group texts and cyberbullying. A group of parents are upset and demanding that something be done to curb these incidents among students. The administration, counselors and faculty are working to get a plan in place to deal with inappropriate texting and technology use as well as a digital citizenship education program. As the learning experience designer, I have been asked to design a blueprint for a digital citizenship campaign and create monthly training workshops and handouts to support parents in their guidance of students’ technology use.
The Solution
I developed an action map for the Screenwise Digital Campaign, so that key stakeholders understood the vision and goals of the campaign. After careful analysis and meeting with school faculty and staff, I determined that a yearlong campaign that involved a multi-pronged approach. It included:
- A kick-off meeting with an expert
- Face-to-face parent and faculty workshops
- Online discussion forum for parents
- Digital citizenship program with students led by school counselors
- Job aids for parents, faculty and students
- A monthly scenario based elearning experience that would be sent out to parents via email with a follow up discussion.
***This project showcases an example of the monthly scenario based elearning experience for parents. The performance goal and process explanation is for that aspect of the campaign.
Performance Goal
The number of inappropriate texting incidents will drop by 50% by the end of the school year as parents learn to communicate effectively with their middle schoolers about technology to provide meaningful expectations and support students to think through their choices with texting and social media posts.
What parents will do to accomplish performance goal:
- Parents will act as media mentors
- Parents will work at being tech positive parents
- Parents will help kids manage their digital reputation/footprint
- Parents will provide training for digital devices and interactions
- Parents will design a technology use plan for their family to include consequences for not following the plan
The elearning experience will help parents have conversations with their children that build trust and provide guidance in a supportive manner.
Analysis
I utilized the research of Devorah Heitner in Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World and from her website Raising Digital Natives. I also relied on my experiences as a technology educator and work with parents in the past to act as the SME for this project. From this, I came up with key behaviors that parents need to perform to help their children navigate the digital world. I relied on the direction of Cathy Moore in Map It to develop the action map and scenario prompts and responses.
Design
I felt strongly that parents needed practice with conversations around digital interactions before they attempted them with their own children. It seemed like scenario-based storytelling through monthly elearning sent out via email would be the most effective means to build skills with parents. The most important aspect of the design was coming up with scenarios that were realistic and required parents to use conversation skills that support their children and build a trusting relationship. I used a text-based storyboard to come up with the initial design for the project. I then created visual mockups in Adobe XD and also a style guide that included color and font choices in addition to other visual elements to be included in the project. I also used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to manipulate images and background visuals for the project.
Development
Once I felt good about the design, I created a visual storyboard in google docs that provided textual and visual details for each of the slides in the elearning project. I also created a resource in Canva for parents that is available at the end of each monthly scenario training that is a pledge to be a Media Mentor that helps parents remember all the ways they should support their children. I then used Adobe Captivate to build out a prototype for the project. My goal was to make it simple, engaging and easy for parents to go through the scenario in 5 minutes or less in the hopes that they would come out of the experience each month feeling more informed and equipped to have conversations with their children. These monthly scenarios would also be discussed amongst parents on a discussion forum as well as during the monthly workshops to further develop key skills as a media mentor.
Implementation
I received really good feedback from parents who viewed the elearning project. They felt the scenario was easy to navigate and the conversations seemed realistic to what they might experience with their own children. I received feedback that the right amount of information was provided to guide conversations and some parents noted that the incorrect responses were ones they often made and appreciated the guidance for having more meaningful, trust-building conversations with their children. I look forward tto build out additional elearning scenarios should the opportunity arise.
Evaluation
Creating this project provided me with an opportunity to really hone my instructional design skills and come up with a workflow that was efficient and effective. It also combined many of my strengths: technology education, parent coaching and curriculum design. One area of improvement would be in developing my skills with Adobe Captivate to make elearning projects more responsive. I feel the Adobe Captivate offers tools for responsiveness that no other authoring tools offer and I would like to continue to build my skills with this.