SELECTED PROJECT:
Rethinking Social Emotional Learning
@ AT&T | 2022-23
Empower students, and teachers, to own their SEL journey.
The Need
NWEA needed help envisioning an educational platform incorporating Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), a new teaching modality in response to the devastating impacts on youth from the pandemic in a partnership with the Tacoma School District in the state of Washington.
Studies show that investing in SEL has a tremendous positive impact on both the academic and personal lives of students, including:
Increased academic performance up to 11 percentile points
Improved classroom behavior
Increased ability to manage stress and depression
Better attitudes about themselves, others, and school
The Work.
We needed to define and design a digital solution that will assist Tacoma Public Schools (TPS) in their efforts to implement a successful district-wide SEL program.
Objectives include:
A strong initial vision of what a user-driven SEL program could look like
An understanding of how and if that vision fits within Compass
A recommended plan of attack with immediate, actionable next steps
To meet those objectives we created SOMO, an interactive third-person world that lets students explore SEL educational activities, learning assessments, personal resources, and community groups to foster continued engagement. The platform includes support tools for teachers that provide real-time data insights to help understand student needs, as well as close pain points preventing teachers from integrating new curricula in limited teaching time. This fun and innovative platform not only alleviated critical bandwidth issues for overworked instructors, but ushered in new learning methodologies to help students worldwide overcome effects of the pandemic.
Our solutioning was driven by both primary and secondary research as well as directly testing design-based prototypes with students and teachers to gather feedback to refine the solution and identify unknown opportunities.
Primary research with students from three TPS middle schools and central office project stakeholders
Secondary research around best practices for app engagement and SEL implementation
Methods & Activities
Conducted 10 (ten) stakeholder interviews including teachers and school district personnel
Reviewed 10 (ten) national studies on SEL including multiple method frameworks
Conducted 10 (ten) third-party SEL application reviews and comparisons
Conducted 36, one-on-one student interviews across grades 6-8
The Outcome.
The result of this research was a validated prototype for the new SEL platform, called SOMOS, and a strategic roadmap for implementation that could be used by the Tacoma Public School District to implement the project.
Somo is an interactive third-person world that delivers both learning content and personal tools to enable student SEL growth.
It provides students with a library of SEL learning modules for both activities and assessments, a suite of support tools and resources, and connection points to fellow students to foster continued learning and engagement.
It includes teacher access that provides clear snapshots of real-time data to understand student progress and needs, and to connect to other in-class SEL curriculums in a time-effective manner.