As of March 5th 2024, Securly has launched a ground-breaking new solution for K-12 schools and districts: Securly Discern.
Securly Discern is a revolutionary AI that generates insights based on students’ online activities and digital footprints, automating data collection and analysis for schools.
From school climate and student interests, to social-emotional competence and safety assessments, Discern’s AI replaces the need for manual surveying and screening, empowering school leaders and student support teams with rich, actionable insights in an instant.
Josh Knutson, the Vice President of New Product Innovation at Securly, introduces Securly Discern as part of his conversation on the Voices in Education podcast.
How does Securly Discern work?
Securly Discern functions as an advanced inference engine, utilizing the power of artificial intelligence to precisely analyze anonymized online activities of students, ensuring the complete removal of any personally identifiable information (PII).
This game-changing solution enables educators to gain a far deeper understanding of their school and students. It also provides in-depth, actionable data, helping to guide informed decisions to support student success. Additionally, it also generates reports of the provided data in whatever format is requested, allowing efficient and effortless creation of data visuals.
To learn more about the ins and outs of Securly Discern, read our blog.
“Discern represents the most impactful innovation that Securly has ever delivered.”
Bharath Madhusudan
Co-Founder / CEO, Securly
Beta customer success stories
Ahead of its launch, Securly worked closely with beta customers, and Discern’s impact was both immediate and remarkable.
When talking about Discern’s very first real-life use within one of the beta customer’s schools, Josh Knutson exclaimed that Discern worked “shocking well” by recognizing an online activity pattern that led to an early intervention for an at-risk student.
Speaking on that same use case, Director of Technology and beta customer Tom Walker couldn’t speak highly enough of his first hands-on impressions with Discern:
“One of the cases it led us to was a student who had several different searches that involved diet pills. It was something I would have never even thought about! I asked Discern to build a chart that showed all these instances and boom: 30 seconds later, I had it.
The sky’s the limit.”
Tom Walker
Director of Technology, Massachusetts School District #1
Working alongside these beta customers also allowed Securly to enhance Discern’s capabilities over the past six months to better reflect the needs and wants of schools and educators.
Alongside a Data Analyst Assistant module which enables interactive analysis and bespoke reporting, the team also incorporated the integration of schools’ SIS data to give a more holistic understanding of student performance and behavior. Not only that, but additions to both the available frameworks and overall user experience have been implemented ready for the wider launch.
The future of AI in education
The launch of Securly Discern is just the beginning, says Josh Knutson of the future of Securly utilizing AI within the education and edtech space.
With Discern, Josh believes that Securly will be able to help schools to understand the core drivers of positive and negative academic outcomes like never before.
“Discern allows us to tell different stories; we can get an incredibly robust picture of a school’s climate and fill any gap in a data story. It allows us to look at any variable we can imagine and ask, ‘Does this have an impact on student success?’.
We can understand what’s moving us forward and what’s holding us back in education.”
Josh Knutson
VP New Product Innovation, Securly
Securly Discern is a giant leap forward, both in terms of helping to transform the way schools operate and how students ultimately learn and are taught successfully.
You can learn more about Securly Discern here.
Why not join our upcoming Discern group demo? Sign up here.
For more information about AI in education and how Discern ensures student data privacy, read the blog.
