As a trusted partner to thousands of public school districts and independent schools, Securly is committed to providing student safety and wellness solutions that are continuously evolving to safeguard students. To demonstrate this commitment, we’ve made significant improvements and additions to our suite of student wellness and safety solutions over the past 10 years.
Among the most significant of these are the changes made to Securly Aware. Securly Aware is known for its ability to detect when students’ online activities indicate signs of self-harm, suicide, violence, and cyberbullying. It then alerts student services teams of these activities so they know which students need help now.
Our latest improvements to Securly Aware go beyond alerting to give resource-constrained district and school teams real-time insight into student safety and wellness. With this insight, student services teams and counselors are able to proactively identify and support students who are struggling, before they reach a crisis point.
How Do Wellness Levels in Securly Aware Work?
First, the Securly Aware AI-driven analysis engine scans students’ online activities for signs of depression, grief, self-harm, suicide, bullying and cyberbullying, and violence. It generates an alert if a student demonstrates concerning activities. But it doesn’t stop there.
A second AI engine, known as At-Risk, continuously analyzes each student’s activities to generate a Wellness Level for that student. Here’s how Wellness Levels are generated:
- Each student starts at an All Clear level.
- If a student demonstrates a series of concerning activities, their Wellness Level will move to the Concerning level.
- If concerning activities continue for a period of time or the student demonstrates a particularly high-risk activity, their Wellness Level will move to High Risk, then Critical if an imminent risk is detected.
- Conversely, if a student’s online activities no longer indicate a concern over a period of time, their Wellness Level will improve.
How do Wellness Levels Benefit Student Services Teams?
The Wellness Level model was driven by a desire to provide more reliable and holistic data about students’ safety and wellness. Instead of focusing on the concerning activities like alerting does, Wellness Levels place the focus on the students themselves.
With the introduction of Wellness Levels, Securly Aware expanded beyond alert generation to provide continuous and dynamic student wellness monitoring. Wellness Levels give student services teams and school counselors a deeper understanding of students’ current state of wellness, from the macro level (entire study body) to the micro level (individual student).
The Aware dashboard displays how many students are currently in each Wellness Level: Concerning, High Risk, and Critical. Users can drill down on each level to see which students are impacted. They can also drill down on the individual student level to get additional insights into an individual student’s situation.
With continuously updated information about students’ Wellness Levels at their fingertips, district and school leaders can keep a pulse on student safety and wellness and quickly spot trends. At the same time, resource-constrained student services teams can effectively support a growing caseload of students to ensure no one slips through the cracks.
Student Wellness Monitoring: Shifting Away from One-time Alerts and Confidence Scores
When Securly Aware was predominantly an alert system, it relied on Confidence Scores to help users identify which alerts needed attention first. The scoring system ranged from 1 to 5, with higher scores indicating greater confidence that the activity was worthy of attention.
This scoring system gave users the ability to set parameters for which alerts they received. They could err on the side of caution and receive all alerts from a score of 1 to 5. or they could choose only to receive alerts above a certain score.
With the introduction of Wellness Levels, the use of Confidence Scores is no longer necessary. The use of Wellness Levels is significantly reducing the volume of alerts. Even more importantly, it’s giving busy district leaders and school teams a more reliable, meaningful, and holistic way to identify and respond to student safety and wellness concerns.
Know Which Students Need Help Now
The introduction of Wellness Levels marked a major milestone in Securly’s evolution. By making the shift from student activity monitoring to holistic student wellness monitoring, we’re rooted even more firmly in our mission to help K-12 schools and districts keep their students safe, secure, and ready to learn.
But don’t just take our word for it. See how Chico Unified relies on Securly to support their students’ safety and wellness. Get the case study.
Curious how Securly could help your school or district?
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