As the Chief of Staff for a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention, intervention and treatment of child abuse – I understand the true value of community collaboration, especially as it relates to the protection of children. Over the past 10 years, I have worked with various child protection professionals, and educational experts, to create the first evidenced based prevention education curriculum designed for students pre-K through 12th grade. With this question, which I asked in reference to ISTE Educator Standard 4, I am looking to explore how collaboration among child protection professionals, and school based educators, can be enhanced and strengthened through online tools such as a Learning Management System. My hope is to expand and enrich the education of students pre-K through 12th grade, and the community with which those students are a part of, to best understand what abuse is; and more importantly, what to do if they witness or experience abuse.
So what is a Learning Management System? As defined by TechTarget, a learning management system (LMS) is “a software application or web-based technology used to plan, implement and assess a specific learning process. Typically, a learning management system provides an instructor with a way to create and deliver content, monitor student participation and assess student performance. A learning management system may also provide students with the ability to use interactive features such as threaded discussions, video conferencing and discussion forums”. Within this definition, a learning management system (LMS) could allow school educators to account for student attendance, deliver prevention education instruction, assess student work and retention, and notably, allow students to communicate with their educators, and appropriate child protection professionals.
The value that an LMS could bring in the area of child protection collaboration is that it can bring a community of professionals together to strengthen and enrich curriculum delivery. An LMS can allow the curriculum to be universally enhanced and updated in real time. And an LMS can inspire the continued development, training and education of all child protection professionals and educators on best practices, available resources, and growing trends.
In our organization, when developing our prevention education curriculum, we explored a variety of online options. Throughout our evaluation, we settled on building out our full curriculum on Adobe Learning Manager, which was once called, Adobe Captivate Prime. Review of this LMS showed that Adobe allowed us to have a single platform which could support hybrid learning, and “create a unified learning experience that gives users a complete view of available learning content through a single dashboard”. This means that students and professionals can make time to meet and collaborate in person or online, while also developing and exploring different content areas around the prevention and intervention of abuse. We believed that a strong function of an LMS should be the ability for personalized learning. A personal learning function creates opportunities for child protection professionals to collaborate to create a unified learning experience making content equitably accessible no matter where students live, online or in person. This also allows for the curriculum, and shared opinions on implementation and methodology, to be uniquely created for each user, which helps ensure the content and educational approach, are meaningful and applicable. Finally, the analytics and insights offered through this platform allows for child protection professionals to easily collaborate and gain a clear picture on how various approaches to methodology, curriculum design, student disclosures, etc. are progressing in the end goal of intervening and breaking cycles of abuse where abuse is occurring (or at risk to occur).
One of the primary and essential responsibilities of both educators, and all child protection professionals, is mandatory reporting. The site, Mandatory Reporter Training, notes that an LMS “provides a simple and effective way of deploying training for mandated reporters…specifically to ensure that individuals, organizations, and States are compliant with regulations pertaining to child abuse identification and reporting”. This is done through Audience-based training which allows for specific training courses to be presented based on the professional or educators vocation, and ensures that all users are getting the most up-to-date information on how to report and protect children at risk or experiencing abuse. An LMS can also provide for role-based functionality based on the role for each user (student, educator, administrator, child protection professional, parent, etc) – and allows for each role to have permissions to unlock certain functions, information, and accessibility. An LMS also allows for tracking and reporting on the curriculum with metrics so that child protection professionals and educators can identify trends; understand what is working and what is being lost; and how to collaboratively improve on the curriculum and delivery so that student and community retention grow, and cycles of abuse are disrupted.
Finally, as illustrated through the website Child Information Gateway, an LMS can help educators and child protection professionals collaborate and share information by organizing – in one location – access to various other educational systems. Such as video sharing the US Departments of Education and the US Department of Health and Human Services collaboration on Ensuring Education Stability for Children in Foster Care; or sharing Key Focus Areas to Ensure Quality Implementation from the Data Quality Campaign & Legal Center for Foster Care and Education.
In short, educational outcomes for children who have adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as that from child abuse, can be significantly improved upon through collaboration between child protection professionals and educators through a shared learning management system.
References:
Brush, Kate. (2019). Learning Management System (LMS). TechTarget. https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/learning-management-system
The web link for the Adobe LMS resource is: https://business.adobe.com/products/learning-manager/adobe-learning-manager.html
The web link for the Mandatory Reporter Training is: https://mandatedreportertraining.com/blog/how-an-lms-makes-mandated-reporter-training-simple-and-easy/
The web link for Child Information Gateway is: https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/management/practice-improvement/collaboration/schools/
