Cataphora Solutions An evolving educational landscape
An evolving educational landscape
Educational institutions are witnessing a rapid evolution of social behaviors stemming from the ubiquity of the internet and other social media. How can we prevent complex problems such as sexting, cyberbullying and cyberstalking with the same effectiveness as we fight their traditional schoolyard counterparts? And how equipped are we to discover and embrace the many opportunities these media provide to improve educational outcomes?
With this explosion of complex electronic data, Cataphora's expertise can be put to good use in conjunction with existing efforts to raise academic standards, reduce achievement gaps and improve student outcomes.

The modern classroom and the modern schoolyard
Following how well students do with their grades and tests can be a practical indicator not just of academic accomplishment, but also of general well-being. But insightful parents and educators know that it is important to look beyond these, because they know that factors outside the classroom can have serious repercussions on students, teachers and parents.

" ... The internet is supposed to be a place that is safe and fun for people ... I was sometimes hurt so badly that I had to fake sick at school just so I could go home. One girl actually told me she would come and murder my parents and kill me personally. She made me cry so hard that I threw up ..." (12 year-old girl from Michigan)

"I still cry when I think of what she said. After a while you start believing all of the things people tell you that aren't true. When I look in the mirror I wonder if I'm fat (I'm not) after what my ex-friend said." (14 year-old girl from Illinois)

Source: cyberbullying.us

Sexting, cyberbullying, various accounts of misuse of social network websites and other online abuses are becoming commonplace and hard, if not impossible, to track with traditional methods. The two comments above are just a hint of the disasters they might breed.

When, in addition to the aforementioned, we add the fact that teenagers are undefeatable when it comes to inventing new ways to express themselves and communicate, and they can do so at unprecedented and incredible speed and volume nowadays, thanks to the proliferation of cell phones and portable electronic devices, we start to understand the complexity of the situation.

Could even the most gifted linguist have predicted the word "sexting" and its meaning five years ago? How about the flood of new text messaging shorthands such as "BFF"? Or better yet "BFFTTE"?

Cataphora's expertise
Cataphora's online information stream analysis has been in use for years to provide extensive insight into electronic data:
  • We can correlate the multitudes of factors that result in a good or bad educational outcome such as: group membership, student-teacher interactions and parent-teacher interactions.
  • Our linguistic expertise allows us to detect fast evolving and often cryptic teenage language, resulting in accurate understanding of content.
  • Our continuous social network analysis can be used to detect significant changes in behavior and answer questions such as:
    • Is a sudden change in activity the sign of an exclusion from a (cyber) community due to false rumor spreading?
    • Is there a burst of hatred emails uniformly directed toward a student?
Read more about our behavioral monitoring technology or contact us for more details.
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