The Backdrop

Bullying has for long been a threat in the United States. The most vulnerable category remains the students of in elementary, middle and high schools. Studies have shown dark statistics with one out of every five students confessing to have bullied his classmates. In most of the states, parents and school representatives have joined hands to combat and stop bullying. Our client is a stalwart in this and he needed an anti-bullying for K-12 students to enlighten school counselors, who in turn would monitor and resolve the bullying cases.
This software could manage multiple affiliates. It had to flexible and usable by teachers, parents, counselors alike in the role of users and they could intervene wherever necessary. Our client would lend this software to respective school Principals in lieu of nominal subscription fees who in turn would assign counselors and teachers.

How it works?

We developed a Bullying Prevention Multi-tier Solution for our client which enabled any victim, witness or anybody else to report an incident and assign a counselor for that particular incident.

Tier 1: Reporting
An interface is created for students, parents and teachers to report any bullying case. Anybody can report a case with a unique tracking number. At this stage, various parameters can be entered like location, type of behavior, gender etc. Such verbatim details go a long way to enable in-depth evaluation. Any reporter can keep his/her identity private if he seeks anonymity.

Tier 2: Principals
A particular case can have multiple reports. Principal (admin) can manage these various reports into a holistic case. The respective Principal assigns a counselor for a particular report. In some cases, even multiple counselors can be assigned to whom mails can be sent. Principal can re-open the already closed reports or even merge new reports with older versions. Student data Management is also a key feature.

Tier 3: Counselors
Counselors receive email notification as and when they are assigned a case. Counselors can log in and study their assigned case. Moreover, they can edit/view/modify the report by clicking on it. Counselors can opt for labels for their reports from available options. They can also choose steps for corrective measures and put notes. They can identify multiple bullying cases by the same victim by searching/sorting features. Designated counselors can in turn assign the case to other counselors. Thus, multiple reports can be merged and consolidated into one case.

Challenges

Dashboard – The entire assembled data had to be graphically presented vis-a-vis the last year’s recorded data.

  1. Addition of interventions in a case
    Once a counselor earmarks a case as moderate bullying, the software would by default propose suggestive interventions enlisted in that section. Once the intervention got added, they were able to add a note in justification of the steps taken to execute the intervention.
  2. Uploads of positive future plan of action
    Any victimized student was given a form by the counselor wherein the student would would meticulously pen down his own positive action plan for better behavior in future, All uploaded documents had to have thumbnail viewing for any selected behavior. After a certain time span, if a new document was added to a certain case, it had to appear along with the master/old case without replacing it.
  3. Filtering of case reports
    The dropdown menus had to be filtered such that just by clicking the column header title, columns were sorted.

Results/Business Impact

The client is very pleased with the quality of responses he received at various interactions with educationists. He shared
this version at many schools and the level of enthusiasm that arose was very promising.

OpenSource Technologies development team not only technically proficient, but they also fostered an empathetic understanding of project goals and potential use. Developers seamlessly…

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